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General discussion

MS Equation 3.0 garbles characters

Nov 15, 2004 7:33AM PST

I have an XP Pro (SP2) machine running MS Office XP and MS Publisher 2003. Was trying to create equations today in MS Word and found that it's not working:

ALL signs (+, -, =, x, etc) show up as wingdings/little icons (arrows, etc.) or as a little vertical rectangle.

Also the entire Equation element is a dark grey color until clicked on for editing.

Needless to say, editing the equation does not solve the problem.

PLEASE HELP!! This is urgent.

I don't think SP2 is the problem - I have another machine same as above, w/o Publisher 2003, and I'm wondering if the combination of Office XP and Publisher 2003 is causing the problem.

All help would be much appreciated!

Thanks in advance

Discussion is locked

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Re: MS Equation 3.0 garbles characters
Nov 15, 2004 7:41AM PST
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Re: MS Equation 3.0 garbles characters
Nov 15, 2004 8:31AM PST

Thanks for those links - they weren't entirely helpful, but they did send me in the right direction. It is a font issue.

The machine in question has Print Artist (DTP software) installed on it, which comes with fonts which are installed in C:\Program Files\Common Files\Broderbund\Core Fonts. The program then puts shortcuts in the C:\windows\fonts folder.

Step 1 was to find the location of the actual fonts, and then remove all the shortcuts. This seems to have solved the issue.

Just to be certain, I am also looking into doing a repair installation on the machine to get rid of any other lurking issues that might be problematic in the future - any thoughts on that would be helpful.

Thanks again

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You didn't note that other software.
Nov 15, 2004 8:41AM PST

But its good you are working your issue.

Abotu Repair Install, I rarely have to do such. I find the IEFIX and a collection of antiparasite (Spyware) tools are all I've ever needed.

Bob