Bullets from Word are appearing as rectangles

[cps-alex]

I am placing a long, heavily formatted Word doc in InDesign and everything looks great except the bullets are showing up as rectangles. When I highlight the bullets in Word it says "Symbol" as the font which I can also see is available in InDesign.

Does anyone have any idea why it's not working? Thanks

[Bevi Chagnon - PubCom · Accepted solution]

The Symbol font used in the MS Word document is different from the one you have on your computer.

If the file came from MS Word / Windows, the default bullet character is character #186 on the TrueType Symbol font. 

Your computer or InDesign probably uses an OpenType version of the Symbol font where the default bullet character is Unicode #2022.

Just change your paragraph style that is formatting the bullets in InDesign to use InDesign's default bullet (it has a little red U on it, meaning it's Unicode, the one you want.

Or Find Fonts and replace the original Symbol with your Unicode Symbol font. Either method will clear up the problem.