Special Symbols Display Incorrectly

Written by Allen Wyatt (last updated September 13, 2025)
This tip applies to Word 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, 2021, 2024, and Word in Microsoft 365

Erik is editing an English document for a client that uses a Spanish version of Word. If he inserts a TM symbol in the document, it shows up fine on his system. For the client, though, it shows as a lowercase "A" with two dots above it. Erik wonders how he can make sure that his symbols (such as TM) show up correctly on the client's system.

There are a couple of things you should check out to see if it fixes your problem. First, you'll want to make sure that the client has installed, on his or her system, the same fonts you are using in the document. Assuming you are both using the same Unicode font, there should be no problem in displaying the TM symbol on both machines.

If the client doesn't have the same font and you cannot change the document to use a font that the client actually has, then you might try to embed the fonts within your document by following these steps:

Display the Word Options dialog box. (In Word 2007 click the Office button and then click Word Options. In Word 2010 or a later version, display the File tab of the ribbon and then click Options.)
At the left of the dialog box click Save. (See Figure 1.)

Figure 1. The Save options in the Word Options dialog box.

Make sure the Embed Fonts In the File check box is selected.
If you will be using a small number of characters in a particular font, choose the Embed Only the Characters Used in the Document check box.
Click on OK.

WordTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Word training. (Microsoft Word is the most popular word processing software in the world.) This tip (12365) applies to Microsoft Word 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, 2021, 2024, and Word in Microsoft 365.

Author Bio

Allen Wyatt

With more than 50 non-fiction books and numerous magazine articles to his credit, Allen Wyatt is an internationally recognized author. He is president of Sharon Parq Associates, a computer and publishing services company. Learn more about Allen...

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2025-09-13 08:14:56

David in Mississippi

Excellent tip, thank you!

You may be interested to consider that two things would make this tip MUCH more useful.

1. When you show the illustration of the Options dialog, draw a red rectangle around the specific option to which you refer. IrfanView is an excellent free program that allows you to do this quickly and easily. Without this, you are making your readers squint at the small and sometimes faded image to try to find the option to which you refer.

2. When you set this option, I suspect it will be a persistent option, meaning that the next time you create a Word document, you will also be embedding your fonts. Whether this is true or not is something you need to cover in this tip, simply so we know what to expect, and that we need to turn it off if we do not want this persistence.

3. (Bonus tip on your tip) It would also be useful to know how turning on this option affects file size, with examples using perhaps a symbols font, both with and without the option selected to use only characters in the document.

Thanks for giving us great tips, and I hope this suggestion helps you make them even better.

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