How Do You Copy/Paste "Special Characters" from Pages into Illustrator?

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Level 1

8 points

How Do You Copy/Paste "Special Characters" from Pages into Illustrator?

My subject line pretty much says it.

I insert a 'special character' into a Pages document... copy it... but when I try to paste it into an Illustrator type block... I get a null character.

Any help would be appreciated.

If it matters; Pages '06 & Illustrator CS3 (13.0.2)

G5 Dual 2.3, Mac OS X (10.5.2)

Posted on May 1, 2008 2:03 PM

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Answer 1

Tom Gewecke

Level 10

122,252 points

May 1, 2008 5:29 PM in response to monkeycoder

I insert a 'special character' into a Pages document... copy it... but when I try to paste it into an Illustrator type block... I get a null character.

What character exactly? If something unusual, then perhaps the font you have selected in Illustrator does not have it.

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Answer 2

monkeycoder Author

Level 1

8 points

May 1, 2008 5:43 PM in response to monkeycoder

Yeah.

The connection I wasn't making was that the typeface being used in Illustrator must contain the given character in order to render it.

The symbol I was trying to use was a tilted lowercase 'e', the universal symbol for 'estimated' as found on product packaging... for example; 4 oz / 120 ml e.

I ended up finding something close enough to what I needed within the "glyphs" palette in Illustrator. The typeface Myriad contained the specific glyph I needed.

Thanks for the reply.

Message was edited by: monkeycoder

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Answer 3

Tom Gewecke

Level 10

122,252 points

May 1, 2008 5:51 PM in response to monkeycoder

The symbol I was trying to use was a tilted lowercase 'e', the universal symbol for 'estimated' as found on product packaging...

Is that the same as the "Estimated Symbol" in Unicode (U+212E) ℮ or something else? 212E does not seem to be "tilted".

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Answer 4

monkeycoder Author

Level 1

8 points

May 1, 2008 6:00 PM in response to Tom Gewecke

This is the correct symbol as well.

Cool.

Any idea how to render a unicode number in Illustrator?

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Answer 5

Tom Gewecke

Level 10

122,252 points

May 1, 2008 6:25 PM in response to monkeycoder

Any idea how to render a unicode number in Illustrator?

Can you copy/paste from my message above?

In most apps you could open the Character Palette (Edit > Special Characters), View = Code Tables, Tab = Unicode, Range = 00002100 Letterlike Symbols, find 212E and double-click on it.

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Answer 6

monkeycoder Author

Level 1

8 points

May 1, 2008 8:29 PM in response to Tom Gewecke

From within Illustrator you can't access the 'special character' dialog available to most OSX applications. Most likely because it's a specialized program dealing itself in type and 'special characters'.

From within Illustrator, the closest I can get to inputing unicode, is the Glyphs dialog under the Type menu. It shows you the unicode numbers for characters you mouse over... but offers no way (that I can find) to input them.

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Answer 7

May 1, 2008 9:50 PM in response to monkeycoder

monkeycoder wrote:
From within Illustrator you can't access the 'special character' dialog available to most OSX applications. Most likely because it's a specialized program dealing itself in type and 'special characters'.

In Illustrator CS2, at least, you can access the Character Palette from the flag menu if you activate it in System Preferences > International > Input menu.

From within Illustrator, the closest I can get to inputing unicode, is the Glyphs dialog under the Type menu. It shows you the unicode numbers for characters you mouse over... but offers no way (that I can find) to input them.

Just double click the character.

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Answer 8

monkeycoder Author

Level 1

8 points

May 1, 2008 10:04 PM in response to SermoDaturCunctis

The FLAG menu!?!

****, I wouldn't have guessed that in a million years.

Thanks for teaching me something new today brother.

Also, I didn't word the second part correctly... what I meant to say was that if you already have the unicode and you need Glyphs to show you the character it represents... I find no place to input the unicode.

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Answer 9

May 1, 2008 10:22 PM in response to monkeycoder

I'm glad that solved it.

monkeycoder wrote:
Also, I didn't word the second part correctly... what I meant to say was that if you already have the unicode and you need Glyphs to show you the character it represents... I find no place to input the unicode.

No, that is probably right. The only way to search by unicode is to hover the mouse over each character. Many of them are sorted by unicode number, but not all. The glyph palette contains some characters that are not directly linked to unicodes - at least that's the case in InDesign.

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