Foreign Font Problem

[ColeBOzbourne]

 

 

     I have a 350 page Microsoft Word document that I seem to have altered and can’t get it back to its original format. I’m pretty sure it happened after I installed a Thai Language Packet for my computer/keyboard. I opened the Word document, which is in English, but didn’t notice I was in the Thai language setting until I started typing. I quickly changed the setting back to English but it seems to have affected the entire document in most areas but not everywhere. The original font of the document is Times New Roman (TNR). No other documents were affected.

 

     One problem is that many punctuation marks are now bold. If I highlight a punctuation mark it indicates that it is NOT bold and the font is TNR. By accident I discovered that if a punctuation mark is highlighted and I click Thesaurus, I receive the message, “Thesaurus not available in Thai.” I can manually change the punctuation marks, but there are too many in a document of such length.

 

     The second problem is that if I try to type new text in between two sentences, the font of the new text is Cordia New instead of TNR. I have to manually change it back to TNR each time. None of these problems existed before.

 

     I have tried removing the Thai package. I have highlighted the entire document, and smaller sections, and tried to change the font to TNR, it will not allow me to do it.  I have made sure language and edit settings are in English. I have opened a new Word document and copied/pasted select parts to it. I have tried three different paste options (Keep Source Formatting/Merge Formatting/Text Only). None of the above solves the problem.

 

     I would appreciate any suggestions to return the document to its original format without losing work I have done to it in the meantime. Thank you for your time.

 

 

Edited January 13, 2019 by ColeBOzbourne

[OneMoreFarang]

Which operation system (Windows version) do you use?

I remember a long time ago there were at least two versions of Times New Roman. An international version and a different font, with the same name, in Thai Windows.

Maybe you can try to work on that text on another PC with is setup with an old Thai windows version. Probably that will "fix" your problem.

And about bold punctuation marks which are not bold: Try to change your screen resolution and/or the zoom in Word. It might be that with a different resolution the text will look different - normal.

[ColeBOzbourne]

     Thank you for the reply. I will play around with some of your ideas. I have Windows 10. The bold punctuation marks are definitely bold, but not all of them. So the ones that are bold stand out very clearly and make the document look ugly. However, when I highlight the punctuation marks the little box that appears does not indicate they are bold.

 

I work from my own laptop at home, so to use another PC I can take it to an internet café on flash-drive and experiment, but can't work there on a continuing basis.

 

[chrisinth]

Have you tried selecting all the text in the document and changing to Times New Roman and whatever font size you want from the drop-down menu? Save-as to another name and try to open it up again.

 

Check your bold/italics selection as well....................

Edited January 14, 2019 by chrisinth

[OneMoreFarang]

1 hour ago, ColeBOzbourne said:

I work from my own laptop at home, so to use another PC I can take it to an internet café on flash-drive and experiment, but can't work there on a continuing basis.

If it looks better on another PC then save it with another font or in notepad (text only). Then you can open that new document on your PC again and work with whatever fonts you have.

[ColeBOzbourne]

     chrisinth, thank you for the suggestion. I tried the 'save-as' trick and that didn't work. I have checked and experimented with the bold/italics section as well. If I highlight a small section of the document, the font is indicated in the dropdown box as TNR. If I highlight the entire document, the font section of the dropdown box is blank. I am able to change the entire document to any other font, but regardless of which one, if I try to type new text in between sentences it always comes out in Cordia New.

 

     I'll experiment on another PC today if possible.

[chrisinth]

2 hours ago, ColeBOzbourne said:

     chrisinth, thank you for the suggestion. I tried the 'save-as' trick and that didn't work. I have checked and experimented with the bold/italics section as well. If I highlight a small section of the document, the font is indicated in the dropdown box as TNR. If I highlight the entire document, the font section of the dropdown box is blank. I am able to change the entire document to any other font, but regardless of which one, if I try to type new text in between sentences it always comes out in Cordia New.

 

     I'll experiment on another PC today if possible.

You could try to set the default font in Word and see if that makes any difference. I'm not sure which flavour of Word you are using, but this is a way to set a default font in Word 2016.

 

1. Open Word and open a new document. Note, you can open the offending document straight away and carry out the below steps as long as you 'save-as' at the end of it.

 

 

2. From the drop-down menus in the font section select which font you want and the size. In the bottom right corner of the font section, you will see a small radio button, click on it.

 

 

3. This will open another box as above. Check that your selection is correct, click Set As Default then click OK

 

 

4. When you click OK as above, this will open a final box for you to chose if you want to make the settings for only this document or, (as in the above snapshot) set this as default for Word. Make your selection and click OK. Close and re-open word and the dodgy document and assuming you selected the all documents based on normal template, you should be able to type in your chosen default.

 

Hopefully this will allow you to troubleshoot a bit further........................

Edited January 15, 2019 by chrisinth

[ColeBOzbourne]

     Thanks for taking the time to give those detailed instructions. I reset the default font yesterday but didn't 'save-as' as per your instructions. I reset the font using your instructions and did 'save-as' and still no luck.

     I experimented with copy/paste as "text only" and DID manage to remove the bold punctuation and the font problem. But it also removed all other formatting such as anything that was centered or written in bold or italics. I'm hoping to avoid going through 350 pages and fixing all that manually, but it might come down to that.

 

Thanks again.

 

[SpaceKadet]

It might be a long shot, but check your default editing language.

In Word, click on File/Options and select Lanuage.

[chrisinth]

5 hours ago, SpaceKadet said:

It might be a long shot, but check your default editing language.

In Word, click on File/Options and select Lanuage.

Or even change to English temporarily and see what you get. Change back to the default after (Mach MS windows).

[tifino]

Highlight and Copy the entire document as one

Try to Paste the whole lot as Plain Text (to rid the text body of any hidden coding)

[ColeBOzbourne]

Thank you to everyone again that offered solutions to my font problem. The issue has been corrected, no thanks to me. I'm posting this in the event that it may help someone else in the future. I reset my computer due to another issue and that resulted in me losing MS Word but not my documents. I went to the computer store and had MS Word downloaded again to my computer and that somehow fixed the problem. Viola!