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A
AGuyLookingForASolution
Known Participant
April 8, 2023
Answered

Data Merge not displaying special characters / symbols

  • April 8, 2023
  • 1 reply
  • 3756 views

I am trying to figure out how to display a🕗 as one of the symbols in my data file. The csv file is re-encoded as U16-LM BOM and this displays the symbols within the CSV file. There are other symbols such as: ●, ◆, ○, ◇ that print out fine. But I am not able to figure out how to get the clock symbol above to appear when exporting to pdf.

 

Please help if you know a solution.

 

Thanks,
Jeff

This topic has been closed for replies.
Correct answer James Gifford—NitroPress

The font used for that glyph must include that Unicode symbol. Not all do. Check in the Glyphs panel. If it's not there, or has a placeholder glyph instead, you'll have to use a different base font or create a character style to override each use of that symbol.

 

1 reply

A
AGuyLookingForASolutionAuthor
Known Participant
April 8, 2023

The clock is: 

Unicode Name: Clock Face Eight O’Clock

Codepoints: U+1F557

A
AGuyLookingForASolutionAuthor
Known Participant
April 8, 2023

The Noto Emoji font has the clock face 1F557, it is also installed on my machine.

The csv file contains the clock face for specific cells -- I can see the symbols in the file when I open it. Encoding in the file is set at UTF-16 LM BOM.

I have changed the font in the template for those cells

I confirm that I can see the cell (which is empty at the moment) has the Noto Emoji font

I then re-export to PDF using Data Merge and nothing appears

Would anyone know how to get this symbol to appear?

James Gifford—NitroPress
James Gifford—NitroPress
Legend
April 9, 2023

Hmmmm, 

I just created a new document and inserted the clocks from the Noto Emoji font. I can see the clocks displaying in the text frame. I then saved the template and exported as PDF print and the pdf if rendered BLANK. Should I be trying to find the unicode character from another font family perhaps?

I am super confused....


Continuing comment from the other thread — if you can't get the glyph to export on its own, no combination of modifying your workflow with the CSV import etc. is going to fix the problem. The 'extreme' Unicode glyphs are not always well supported, even if they're properly defined and using a font that contains them. If a simple ID doc with the correct font and the glyph showing won't export... I'd suspect this is not a trivial problem that can be easily fixed.

 

I again think it's maybe time to rework the spreadsheet/import to use more standard characters, or even create an image file from the glyph (in Illustrator or Photoshop, perhaps) rather than keep trying to make it work as a fragile chain of typography.

 

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