How to view special or Unicode characters

Posted on July 26, 2008 at 5:03 am

Recently, I’ve had a few troubles with viewing special characters on my computer – especially fancy ones – like character smiley faces, stars, and all sorts of random things.

So, I scoured the internet for many ways to fix this problem. After many attempts to try and fix the problem, I finally found one that actually worked. And, so, I thought I’d share it with you.

First of all, you have to get certain fonts which support the odd characters, and also make it compatible for your browser to view the annoying things. To save you from the time and effort of trying to find out how to do it, I’ve come up with a quick little way of doing it:

Please note that this method has only been tried & tested on Windows XP, but it’s bound to work on Windows Vista as well. If it does not, I will not be blamed for giving false advice, but Vista should have a very similar method, so just look around a bit, and eventually you’ll find out how to do that. If all else fails, try Google.

On Windows XP, to get the extra fonts, you simply do this:

Step 1: Click on the ‘Start’ Button

Step 2: Go onto the ‘Settings’

Step 3: Go into the ‘Control Panel’

Step 4: Go on the ‘Regional and Language Options’

Step 5: On the ‘Languages’ tab, check both the boxes for Supplemental Language Support. This will install all the optional fonts.

Your screen should look like this by the end:

The next part basically involves getting the Arial Unicode Font.

Assuming you have Microsoft Word, go into the Control Panel, then go into the Add & Remove Features, and choose Microsoft Word. Change the program, and check the box that says Choose advanced customization of applications, and click Next. Click the + next to Office Shared Features, then International Support. Then pick the Universal Font, and choose the installation option you wish for.

If that fails, you can put the Microsoft Office disk in again, then make the changes and that should fix your problem. If that doesn’t work, simply reinstall the Microsoft Word, but with the FULL install option, and that should also work.

You internet browser should automatically be able to choose the right fonts automatically, and you should be able to see the special characters. If your wondering, I’m using Firefox 3.0, and it’s working fine on this.

If you need to get the Arial Unicode Font, here it is:

http://www.lightworker.com/Download/Fonts/ARIALUNI.TTF

And there you have it! A perfect solution to a rather difficult problem. There’s probably a few other working methods out there, but I’ve found this one easiest. The only slight problem I’ve found with this method, is that sometimes Chinese characters come up as a random string of characters, which can really annoy you at times (Especially half-way through a serious essay!). But unless you frequently view Chinese characters (probably unlikely, but you never know), this should work fine.

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