Lose Unicode Special Characters when linking to Excel Document

[_Tina_Breed_]

We have just installed FrameMaker 8.0 which is suppose to support Unicode.

When linking to an Excel document with Arial Unicode fonts, special characters are changed to question marks ("?").

Does anyone know a fix or a work around?

Thanks.
Tina
p.s. We use Microsoft Windows XP...

[AxialInfo]

Tina, what exact FM version, from Help > About, the "pxxx" numbers.

[_Tina_Breed_]

Hi Sheila,

It is v8.0 p266...

Tina

[Arnis Gubins]

Tina,

There is a patch to p273 (aka 8.0.2) out. As well, there was an
additional to p276 (8.0.3) that was recalled last week and should be
re-issued shortly.

Which specific characters (unicode values) are not coming through?

[_Tina_Breed_]

Thanks Arnis,

It was the checkmark/box symbols in Excel -that when imported into FM convert to question marks.

I am still trying to add the new patch. When I use the Update command under Help, I get an error that tells me it cannot continue...

I'll keep trying.

Tina

[Arnis Gubins]

Tina,

When doing the updates, make sure you exit FrameMaker before the
actual installation begins.

You might want to try using either the Wingdings or Dingbats fonts for
the check boxes. Arial Unicode is a big font and there have been
reports of flakey behaviour with it.

[_Tina_Breed_]

Thank you Arnis,

We have successfully installed the latest patch - but we are still having the same font problem when linking to Excel documents. We have tried using the Unicode fonts as well as the standard Wingdings / Dingbats. They do not import to FM when linking to Excel - they only appear when copying/pasting as RTF.

I guess we'll wait for 8.0.3. If that still doesn't work, we'll just use text instead of symbols.

Tina

[Arnis Gubins]

Tina,

Have you tried importing by reference the Excel files instead of
linking them in?

[_Tina_Breed_]

Yes, we've just tried that - and it works - but then we lose the ability to automatically update the table in FM when the Excel file is updated. The main goal of this particular FM document is to make the tables automatically update when Engineering makes a change to their Excel file.

I have also just tried modifying the table cell in Excel [Format-Style-Modify] by changing it to "Text". That seems to solve the problem when I link the entire Excel document into FrameMaker. But most of the time, we would only need to link a portion of the table [Copy then paste special in FM and select "Link Microsoft Office Excel Object"]. In this case the font issue still exists.