google docs special characters

Question

Level 1

129 points

google docs special characters

Hi all,

I am using Google Docs to write a letter, and as part of the header I am using special characters for the telephone number and email address. They are small images of a smart phone and a telephone, that I add using the Insert>Special Characters menu options. They are U+1F4DE and U+1F4E7 (images of an envelope and a telephone)

When printing via my computer, the images show up as missing characters (square blocks) when opening via Preview and Adobe Reader. Does anyone know how I can fix that problem? Is there a set of Google fonts that I may need to download for these apps to read and download the documents correctly?

Thanks

Posted on Jan 19, 2016 6:22 AM

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Answer 1

Tom Gewecke

Level 10

122,252 points

Jan 19, 2016 7:11 AM in response to Nic P

I don't know how you are generating those PDF's, but it sounds like the font is not being embedded in them.

You might try downloading the OpenSansEmoji font and see if it helps at all.

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Answer 2

Nic P Author

Level 1

129 points

Jan 19, 2016 8:12 AM in response to Tom Gewecke

Hi Tom,

Thanks for the suggestion. I tried that, but no luck. The PDF is generated by Google. When you "print" a Google Document, the website downloads it as a PDF in the Downloads folder of your hard disk and then opens it in Preview. Then you can print it normally.

What is strange is that when I copy/paste the text from Google Docs to Pages, it shows up correctly but I think the emojis are images rather than characters as they remain unchanged when I change their font.

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Answer 3

Tom Gewecke

Level 10

122,252 points

Jan 19, 2016 8:23 AM in response to Nic P

Nic P wrote:

What is strange is that when I copy/paste the text from Google Docs to Pages, it shows up correctly but I think the emojis are images rather than characters as they remain unchanged when I change their font.

They should be real characters, not images. You can't change their font, there is only one font which contains color emoji, and Pages will always use that.

If you export the Pages text to PDF, do the emoji show up as they should? If so, it is the google pdf generation process which is the problem. This would not surprise me, because Google does not have the color emoji font to embed, it is only on your machine.

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Answer 4

Nic P Author

Level 1

129 points

Jan 19, 2016 8:29 AM in response to Tom Gewecke

I agree with that, as I did export the Pages document to PDF and emojis showed up correctly. So it must be the conversion process at Google that does not embed the emoji character. Hopefully Google will create a fix for that.

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