Ubiquitous question mark in triangle shape

"particular font for use to substitute for undefined glyphs."

Good response.

Yes, it is a diamond. I stand corrected.

Actually, it is probably better described as a "diamond" shape. That unusual character is probably the .notdef character defined in that particular font for use to substitute for undefined glyphs.

- Dov

Interesting that the OP sees a rectangle/square shape as a triangle, though. ;)

"it's when you move that file without the fonts that you start really asking for trouble."

Seems like it might be a good idea to have PowerPoint have a 'Package' option to gather up links and fonts for the purpose of moving the presentation to other platforms.

Well, using a PowerPoint file and fonts on the same computer the presentation was created on is relatively safe... it's when you move that file without the fonts that you start really asking for trouble.

T

Thanks Dov,

Good information to know.

Ken

There is always some idiot in the audience who will yell stupid things about the issue being a PC problem or a Macintosh problem ...

Without seeing the actual PowerPoint presentation file as well as the fonts involved, a definitive diagnosis cannot be provided. Having said that, instinct would suggest that the problem is associated with cross-platform differences in characters sets used by PowerPoint and/or differences in the fonts between the platforms. This is exactly why using PowerPoint files as opposed to a PDF file (with all fonts embedded) created from the PowerPoint file for an actual presentation is not a particularly good idea.

One of the problems is that PowerPoint on Windows and PowerPoint on Macintosh handle fonts and character sets differently. PowerPoint on Windows has used Unicode encoding for a number of years; I believe that PowerPoint 2008 on the Macintosh is the first Mac version to support Unicode, at least for new documents.

- Dov