Display of non-printing ASCII characters

[Tim Morrill]

I am dealing with a Word document that has characters generated in the
following manner. The goal was to create checkboxes without using the
checkbox from the Forms toolbar.

1. In MS Excel, type the formula =CHAR(1). The ASCII character at position 1
is not a printable character, and generally displays as a symbol that
resembles a checkbox.

2. Copy this [non-]character into MS Word. Again, it generally shows as
something resembling a checkbox.

Now, the problem is that on some computers the characters do not display as
boxes, but instead display as some other symbol (for instance, a "+" sign).
What would cause different computers to display this [non-]character in
different ways?

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

Many applications or fonts do use a box to indicate nonprintable characters,
but it's risky to depend on this. For another way to create such boxes, see
the very end of the article at
http://sbarnhill.mvps.org/WordFAQs/Overbar.htm. You can also use box
characters from fonts such as Wingdings.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
http://word.mvps.org