How to insert Unicode 2611 ballot box with Check into Word

[Lionelgee]

I have the latest version of Word and I cannot find the unicode symbol 2611
which is a ballot box with a check. I have pressed alt and 2611 on the number
lock pad and do not get the right symbol. Does anyone know what the number
microsoft accepts for this symbol. I checked the symbol library and the
bullet point library and cannot find the symbol.

Kind Regards
Lionel

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

If a font contains the character, it will be in the Miscellaneous Dingbats
character set. Most fonts don't contain it. You can find it in Arial Unicode
MS, but a better approach might be instead to use character 254 in the
Wingdings font. You can pretty much depend on any system to have Wingdings
installed, while Arial Unicode MS is an optional install that won't be
present on every system.

Note that to insert higher Unicode characters such as this in Word, you
should type 2611 and then press Alt+X. Unfortunately, if you do this in
Times New Roman, you get a rather distorted check box character in MS
Mincho.

 

[Jallan]

If a font contains the character, it will be in the Miscellaneous Dingbats
character set. Most fonts don't contain it. You can find it in Arial Unicode
MS, but a better approach might be instead to use character 254 in the
Wingdings font. You can pretty much depend on any system to have Wingdings
installed, while Arial Unicode MS is an optional install that won't be
present on every system.

This should be done only if you know your document will be read by Windows users or you are outputting your document as a PDF file. Any Windows system will probably have Wingdings. Macintosh or Linux or Solaris or non-Windows system almost certainly won’t have it. Using any symbol-type font is a very wrong thing to do for a file intended for general distribution.

Although Arial Unicode MS is a reasonable font to select if you want to use the universally used Unicode value for this character, note that this font is also unavailable on systems where the user has not obtained it by purchasing it, stealing it, or getting it through Microsoft Office. I suggest downloading the free Unicode Symbols front from http://users.teilar.gr/~g1951d/download.html which will give you almost all available Unicode symbols with the proper encoding. Since this font is free, you can provide it along with your file to other viewers or provide the link for downloading. The same is true from the DejaVu Sans and the DejaVu Mono fonts available free from http://sourceforge.net/projects/dejavu .

Note that to insert higher Unicode characters such as this in Word, you
should type 2611 and then press Alt+X. Unfortunately, if you do this in
Times New Roman, you get a rather distorted check box character in MS
Mincho.

I believe this depends on what fonts you have installed on your system. That is, if the character asked for does not appear in the current font, the software will go through the installed fonts and substitute the corresponding character from another font, going partly by similarity to the main font. Others who view the file on other systems may see instead the character from a font other than MS Mincho, depending on what fonts they have installed.

But they should at least see the proper character if it exists in any font that they have installed. This does not work if you use Wingdings.