Icon glyphs not showing up in Microsoft Word/Powerpoint

Glyphs
1

I designed a font with dingbats/icons in it and they are not showing up in Microsoft Word or Powerpoint. Dont appear in symbols or special characters panel.
Any potential reason for this? Any help!?
cheers

2

How are you testing this font? Do you maybe have an older version installed?

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3

Many thanks, the font is being tested in adobe suits (where the glyphs are available in the glyph panel) but in word/powerpoint the special characters are no where to be found. My client is using Microsoft/PC not mac btw

4

Are your special characters encoded in any way (do they have a Unicode value)? I’m not sure whether Word/PowerPoint on Windows have an easy time displaying unencoded glyphs.

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5

Ah no they dont have unicode. How would i apply? Many thanks

6

What’s in your letters A-Z and a-z? Doesn’t Word display the font name in the menu in the letters of the font itself? So if they are blank, you won’t see anything in the menu.

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7

Yes it displays in the font menu as it should.
All caps display typeface. A-Z and 0-9 work fine and any key works, but the dingbats (which aren’t assigned to keys) just dont show up in the symbols drop down and cant seem to access anywhere within Microsoft office

8

You need some kind of mapping to be able to access glyphs in a font. That can be a unicode value or a OpenType substitution from another encodes glyphs (1). But as Office is known for subpar support for OpenType, assigning unicodes is probably the better solution.

(1) depending on you icons there are several strategies

  • if the icons are made from pieces that are encoded, you could try to build ligatures from those. Apple is building the family emoji from code for single people and Skin tone modifiers.
  • use Private Use area codes.
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9

What Georg said. Assigning Unicode values is your best bet. Depending on the icons you added, you will probably prefer adding your custom PUA (Private Use Area) Unicode values.

There is a mekkablue script (available in the Plugin Manager under Scripts) called Add PUA Unicode Values to Selected Glyphs, this is the easiest way to achieve this.

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10

Thanks all for your input. Much appreciated. I will try all of the above and hopefully it will work!

11

I forgot to mention im using glyphs mini so dont have access to plugins :s
Any way to add unicodes without the plugin?

12

No, this is not possible in Glyphs Mini.

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13

Ok many thanks for letting me know