High Sierra Symbol font not available

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Level 1

8 points

High Sierra Symbol font not available

When using TextEdit, or Pages, or Keynote, I cannot get symbols to show by selecting the Symbol font.

I can see some useful symbols by installing the menubar keyboard icon and looking at the keyboard, and that is helpful in telling me what keys to press for some common symbols.

For other math bits I can look at the Character Viewer under the Emojis and Symbols pull-down menu item and double click to transfer the item (I would have thought copy and paste should work; it does not).

So these workarounds are helpful; but is there a fault with the Symbol font in OS High Sierra? Why does that method of font selection no longer work? My computer is a brand new one and I would have thought to be uncorrupted.

iMac 21.5" 4K, macOS 10.13

Posted on Apr 25, 2019 9:01 AM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

Tom Gewecke

Level 10

120,188 points

Apr 25, 2019 10:44 AM in response to elgrip

elgrip wrote:

When using TextEdit, or Pages, or Keynote, I cannot get symbols to show by selecting the Symbol font.

In a Unicode system like MacOS, you normally do not get symbols or other special characters by just switching fonts. You have to use a specific keyboard or the Character Viewer. The font takes care of itself.

Fonts that do produce symbols when you type standard latin characters are typically not Unicode, and you should avoid them if you want to be sure that your text will appear correctly on other machines or platforms, since they may not have these same fonts installed. This includes legacy "Symbol" fonts sometimes found in MS and Adobe apps. The Greek they produce is not real Greek, but Latin faking it. These days everyone should be using Unicode Greek, via the Greek input source or Character Viewer.

If you have specific characters you are having trouble making, we can tell you what keyboard to use or where to find them in the Character Viewer.

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Answer 2

Tesserax

Level 10

154,898 points

Apr 25, 2019 9:20 AM in response to elgrip

Interestingly, when I tried accessing the Symbol font in TextEdit, I didn't initially see it in the font drop-down window. I then selected the "Show fonts..." option in that same window and located the Symbol font there and selected it. It then became available as a "favorite" font in the font window in TextEdit.

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Answer 3

elgrip Author

Level 1

8 points

Apr 25, 2019 9:40 AM in response to Tesserax

Thanks for checking on this, Tesserax. I can do the same thing also; but the problem occurs when I have text typed in TextEdit, then select it, then click on the Symbol font, and the text does NOT change to Symbol. I can select other weird fonts like Papyrus, or SignPainter, and the selected text is converted OK; but Symbol does not work.

So .. what is the problem with Symbol in this OS?

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Answer 4

elgrip Author

Level 1

8 points

Apr 25, 2019 10:32 AM in response to VikingOSX

Many thanks to all who have replied above.

I did try out the Apple Symbols font; interesting to see that list of extra fonts after the Zapfino! ... but still it does not do the Greek symbols that used to be in the regular Symbol font.

Apple Symbols seems to just make a more compact, smaller regular font, not Greek.

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Answer 5

BDAqua

Level 10

246,371 points

Apr 25, 2019 9:38 AM in response to elgrip

On my HS install it shows In Text Edit>CMD+t, under All Fonts & PDF categories.

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Answer 6

BDAqua

Level 10

246,371 points

Apr 25, 2019 10:08 AM in response to elgrip

Same problem here, even downloaded & installed another one...

https://ttfonts.net/font/38032_Symbol.htm

No change. :(

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Answer 7

VikingOSX

Level 10

119,363 points

Apr 25, 2019 10:20 AM in response to elgrip

The Symbols.ttf font has a very small fraction of characters to that of the Apple Symbols.ttf font — the latter which appears after Zapfino in an application font list.