System font on new computer displays weird characters

jjstephens75 · 04 Dec 2018

Just curious...did you fly toms? Back in the day I was a back-seater on the S-3A. Obviously, that was a looong time ago!

Bree · 04 Dec 2018

jjstephens75 said:

The only lingering issue is that a couple files that have an ampersand in the file name still show the weird symbol (^0) in Office applications though they appear as expected in File Explorer and another file manager I use (FreeCommander).

Office applications may be using their own choice of font (possibly one that came with Office, so wouldn't have been updated by reinstalling Windows) while your file managers will use system defaults.

At this point, I'm happy with the results.

If you can live with the Office 'quirk' then leave it as it is, no harm will be done. If you want to investigate further we'd need to know precisely which version of Office.

jjstephens75 · 04 Dec 2018

Thanks for your thoughts.
When I updated to 1809 the notice I got said that Office 365 also updated.
If you can offer a thought about fixing it, great. If not, I can live with it as is.

Bree · 04 Dec 2018

I don't have Office 365, I'll leave it for other who do to make suggestions....

f14tomcat · 04 Dec 2018

jjstephens75 said:

Thanks for your thoughts.
When I updated to 1809 the notice I got said that Office 365 also updated.
If you can offer a thought about fixing it, great. If not, I can live with it as is.

@jjstephens75

If the Office 365 went in at the same time as the 1809 Feature Upgrade, there is a chance it may have burped somewhere along the line. Fonts are tricky things, at best. It's easy to do a repair on your Office 365 without losing anything. Takes about 5-10 minutes depending on your machine.

Go to Settings> Apps. Scroll down to Microsoft Office. Right click it, Click Modify. Click the option to do the Online Repair. Click Repair. Ok your choices if asked and just let it run. It will basically do a complete in-place re-install of Office 365, without deleting any of your work. And it will clean up after itself. Give it a try, it does work.

System font on new computer displays weird characters-2018-12-04_16h36_03.png

jjstephens75 · 05 Dec 2018

Thanks Dick. I've used the online repair a few times in the past--didn't even think of doing it this time.

The Office update that happened simultaneously with the 1809 update resulted in one frequently used Word from having the text garbled. Alas, the online repair didn't fix it nor did it fix the file name issue. I was able to restore that form from a backup copy. I tried renaming it (within Word), but it still has the funky characters.

Whilst typing this reply a thought occurred to me & when I googled it, I discovered it might be the problem. Since installing my new computer I have not downloaded the several gigs of files from OneDrive. Files stored on OneDrive are renamed using with a unique URL and those URLs have to follow internet naming conventions which does not allow for special characters. When I saved the file to my local machine, it retained the character and renders correctly in Office applications. Problem solved!!!

Thanks to all who shared ideas. This seems like a relatively minor issue but for some reason it was driving me bonkers. Your input was deeply appreciated.

f14tomcat · 05 Dec 2018

jjstephens75 said:

Thanks Dick. I've used the online repair a few times in the past--didn't even think of doing it this time.

The Office update that happened simultaneously with the 1809 update resulted in one frequently used Word from having the text garbled. Alas, the online repair didn't fix it nor did it fix the file name issue. I was able to restore that form from a backup copy. I tried renaming it (within Word), but it still has the funky characters.

Whilst typing this reply a thought occurred to me & when I googled it, I discovered it might be the problem. Since installing my new computer I have not downloaded the several gigs of files from OneDrive. Files stored on OneDrive are renamed using with a unique URL and those URLs have to follow internet naming conventions which does not allow for special characters. When I saved the file to my local machine, it retained the character and renders correctly in Office applications. Problem solved!!!

Thanks to all who shared ideas. This seems like a relatively minor issue but for some reason it was driving me bonkers. Your input was deeply appreciated.

Glad you got it fixed.