Problem selecting certain weights in Word 2011/Mac

[George Nospam]

Greetings!

People in my office, using Word 2011 both Mountain Lion and Snow
Leopard, have encountered and been unable to resolve the following
problem, which I will describe in some detail. For example, this happens
on my home computer running 10.8.4, but not on my office computer
running 10.8.4. They are configured the same way, both in terms of OS
and Office, so we are quite perplexed.

When the problem occurs, a Word document is created on one computer
which contains Russian Cyrillic in Times New Roman, or also certain
letter + diacritic combinations found in E. European languages like
Czech or Croatian. All characters display correctly in the most standard
weights (Roman, Italic, Bold, Bold Italic). This is a Unicode font, and
this would seem to be absolutely normal. We open the same file on
another computer, equivalently equipped and configured, and all of a
sudden, while the characters display fine in TNR Roman, they display as
small boxes in Italic, Bold, and Bold Italic.

WORKAROUND: For years we've had this problem, and a simple workaround in
Word 2004 (we never used Word 2008, and 2004 doesn't work any more with
Mountain Lion) has been to search for TNR plus Italic formatting (e.g.,
by clicking the Italic button in a toolbar) and replacing with Times New
Roman Italic font, clicking the Italic button twice to add "Not Italic"
to the formatting specification in the Replace With box. When the font
is selected as TNRItalic, the characters always display. In all
installations of Office, both 2004 and 2011, the box is checked in
Tools/AutoCorrect/Autoformat as you type sayng [Replace as you type]
"Bold" and Italic with real formatting. But doing the same replacement
by hand *works*.

PROBLEM in WORD 2011: In Word 2011, we cannot use this workaround. You
can use Modify Font in Advanced Find and Replace to specify TNR as the
font to search for, but you cannot hit the I[talic] button to add
"Italic" to the formatting specification. If you select Italic in the
Style box in the Font dialog box, it searches for TNR Italic PLUS the
Italic styling, i.e., the real italic weight of the font WITH
SUPPLEMENTAL WORD ITALICS ADDED, and doesn't find TNR Italic at all!
there seems to be NO WAY to search for TNR plus Word's built-in italic
(or oblique) style formatting OR the true TNR Italic weight of the
installed font.

So we find ourselves unable to work around this problem. Maybe this will
motivate us to find a true solution, i.e., to spot some configuration
issue that makes this not work on some computers. Sure is a pain in the
ass though in the meantime.

Thanks in advance for any informed comments.

George

[Michael Vilain]

Post by George Nospam
Greetings!
People in my office, using Word 2011 both Mountain Lion and Snow
Leopard, have encountered and been unable to resolve the following
problem, which I will describe in some detail. For example, this happens
on my home computer running 10.8.4, but not on my office computer
running 10.8.4. They are configured the same way, both in terms of OS
and Office, so we are quite perplexed.
When the problem occurs, a Word document is created on one computer
which contains Russian Cyrillic in Times New Roman, or also certain
letter + diacritic combinations found in E. European languages like
Czech or Croatian. All characters display correctly in the most standard
weights (Roman, Italic, Bold, Bold Italic). This is a Unicode font, and
this would seem to be absolutely normal. We open the same file on
another computer, equivalently equipped and configured, and all of a
sudden, while the characters display fine in TNR Roman, they display as
small boxes in Italic, Bold, and Bold Italic.
WORKAROUND: For years we've had this problem, and a simple workaround in
Word 2004 (we never used Word 2008, and 2004 doesn't work any more with
Mountain Lion) has been to search for TNR plus Italic formatting (e.g.,
by clicking the Italic button in a toolbar) and replacing with Times New
Roman Italic font, clicking the Italic button twice to add "Not Italic"
to the formatting specification in the Replace With box. When the font
is selected as TNRItalic, the characters always display. In all
installations of Office, both 2004 and 2011, the box is checked in
Tools/AutoCorrect/Autoformat as you type sayng [Replace as you type]
"Bold" and Italic with real formatting. But doing the same replacement
by hand *works*.
PROBLEM in WORD 2011: In Word 2011, we cannot use this workaround. You
can use Modify Font in Advanced Find and Replace to specify TNR as the
font to search for, but you cannot hit the I[talic] button to add
"Italic" to the formatting specification. If you select Italic in the
Style box in the Font dialog box, it searches for TNR Italic PLUS the
Italic styling, i.e., the real italic weight of the font WITH
SUPPLEMENTAL WORD ITALICS ADDED, and doesn't find TNR Italic at all!
there seems to be NO WAY to search for TNR plus Word's built-in italic
(or oblique) style formatting OR the true TNR Italic weight of the
installed font.
So we find ourselves unable to work around this problem. Maybe this will
motivate us to find a true solution, i.e., to spot some configuration
issue that makes this not work on some computers. Sure is a pain in the
ass though in the meantime.
Thanks in advance for any informed comments.
George

Have you called Microsoft to ask about this? It sounds like the
International character set isn't fully portable between systems. It
should be the same between different Macs, assuming all the systems have
the same font installed. Note that if you had Word 2004, the New Times
Roman on that system isn't the same as the version installed by Word
2011.

Sadly, I don't have a work around for you other than to pay for
Microsoft to solve this problem in per call support. Pay with a credit
card so you contest the charge if they don't deliver.