Symbol & Wingding fonts will not show in pages text style formatting. How can I access them please?

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Level 1

8 points

Symbol & Wingding fonts will not show in pages text style formatting. How can I access them please?

I am unable to access 'symbol' or the 'wingdings' set of fonts in the Pages v5.2.2 format inspector (text style). OS10.9.5

They are listed in both the Font Drop Down on the Menu Bar....and in the Font Book (in 'All Fonts' & 'Computer' on iMac, and in 'All Fonts' & 'User' on MacBookPro).

I have validated the fonts (all ok) and disabled and enabled with no change to the problem.

I have installed fonts from DaFont and similar and they work without any difficulty.

Any advice on how I can get these standard symbols to work in Pages please.

I've just checked and they don't seem to work in other Mac apps - are they alien fonts to Mac?

If so, and advice what can I use please? And would it export to Word doc?

Posted on May 26, 2015 1:03 PM

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Answer 1

Best reply

Tom Gewecke

Level 10

115,800 points

May 26, 2015 2:23 PM in response to Purplemage

In unicode systems like OS X you normally don't make symbols by changing fonts. Instead you use the Character Viewer

OS X Yosemite: Use the Character Viewer

Things you compose with Character Viewer to export correctly to Word.

Note: Starting with 10.10.3, the menu item Special Characters has been changed to Emoji & Symbols.

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Answer 2

Purplemage Author

Level 1

8 points

May 26, 2015 3:33 PM in response to Tom Gewecke

Thanks so much Tom. Really appreciate your response and the solution and knowledge gained.

You're a star.

Brian

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Answer 3

May 26, 2015 3:47 PM in response to Purplemage

Thought you might want to know that in the Special Characters (nee Emoji & Symbols - 10.10.3) panel, the Dingbats category is not available by default. Visit the gear icon under the traffic lights on this panel. Select Customize List…, and choose Dingbats. Click Done. When you click Dingbats in the left category panel, the default character view will be Webdings. The selector bearing Webdings will offer you many other choices.

Unfortunately, a font-selectable keyboard viewer has not been with us for several years now.

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