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Offline Jack W

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problem with bullet character
« on: June 08, 2007, 08:45:51 PM »
Here I am again before you guru's asking for help. sos.gif
I have always used Option-8 to insert a bullet point into a field in MS Excel. It always worked.

Until recently. Now it wants to insert an underline character (_) . ???? dntknw.gif

• It works here •

And it works in M$ Word X, but not in Excel X.

I ran Applejack and repaired permissions several times. Still no happiness.

Anybody have any ideas or insights to share????

Thanks, Jack
« Last Edit: June 08, 2007, 08:47:21 PM by Jack W »
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Offline Xairbusdriver

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problem with bullet character
« Reply #1 on: June 08, 2007, 09:20:21 PM »
What font(s) are you using?
Does Excel have a 'language' selection/preference setting? Try "Western-ISO-8859" or something like that. Perhaps it comes with some "windows" version as default. dntknw.gif
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Offline Gregg

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problem with bullet character
« Reply #2 on: June 08, 2007, 09:22:20 PM »
Does OSX have an equivalent to the "old" (some would say ancient) Keycaps panel? It would (will in my case) show you (or me) what the Shift and Option keys do to your keyboard. It would be a shame if that got 86ed by Apple.
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Offline krissel

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« Reply #3 on: June 08, 2007, 09:39:39 PM »
Could you have accidentally chosen a different keyboard layout for Excel? That happened to me somehow once while using another app and I never found out why. Look in the menubar while it's active to see if you have the US flag showing or look in the system prefs. Try dumping the related prefs for it and Excel, too.
« Last Edit: June 08, 2007, 09:40:33 PM by krissel »
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Offline Jack W

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problem with bullet character
« Reply #4 on: June 09, 2007, 09:51:29 AM »
QUOTE(krissel @ Jun 8 2007, 10:39 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>
Could you have accidentally chosen a different keyboard layout for Excel? That happened to me somehow once while using another app and I never found out why. Look in the menubar while it's active to see if you have the US flag showing or look in the system prefs. Try dumping the related prefs for it and Excel, too.


krissel,

BINGO!

I had chosen "U.S. Extended" under the flag in the menu bar.

Changing it back to "U.S." fixed the problem.

Many thanks for the clue. Many times I'm without one.

Much joy has returned to computer land.

Gregg,

I have a keycaps panel. But I just noticed under the menu bar flag that there is a "Show Keyboard Viewer" option that does all this!

Sometimes it pays to be paying attention!

Points of interest:

When I show the Keyboard Viewer when within Excel and click the Option key, it shows the bullet.

However, when I click the bullet, it inserts an underline instead of the bullet! Thinking.gif  ohmy.gif  

Go figure that one out!

It's also interesting to note that the choices of U.S. vs. U.S. Extended are selectable for an individual application, independent of other applications. Did you know that? I didn't until krissel gave me the clue and I started experimenting. Thanks, krissel! You are GOOD!

- Jack
« Last Edit: June 09, 2007, 09:58:19 AM by Jack W »
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Offline Xairbusdriver

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problem with bullet character
« Reply #5 on: June 09, 2007, 10:09:47 AM »
Are you saying that Excel is still displaying the underline rather than the bullet?

Have you checked its probably vast preferences to see if it has the 'language' settings I suggested? If that is not a Mac-friendly set of characters, you'll continue to get what it wants to display, regardless of what keyboard settings you select. The only thing a keyboard  does is to send a number to the OS, the OS/software then uses that number to decide what character to display, be it Russian, Spanish, English or pig-latin. That's the way I understand it, anyway. dntknw.gif
« Last Edit: June 09, 2007, 10:12:38 AM by Xairbusdriver »
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Offline Jack W

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problem with bullet character
« Reply #6 on: June 09, 2007, 11:39:52 AM »
Xabd,

No preference settings that I can find in Excel X for language.

However,

I need to correct a statement I made:

It appears that I was wrong  about being able to select "US" vs "US Extended" in the menu bar for an individual application. Only during current session. It reverts back to the Finder selection when you re-enter the App.

Thanks, Jack
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Offline Gregg

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problem with bullet character
« Reply #7 on: June 09, 2007, 01:41:08 PM »
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Offline Xairbusdriver

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problem with bullet character
« Reply #8 on: June 09, 2007, 05:10:04 PM »
OK, Here's some 'wisdom' I was going to impart just before we had a server hiccup...

Excel may not have any options for selecting which variant of characters can be used. It probably just uses whatever is the System is using. I at first suspected that the UNICODE characters offered by the Extended set might be the problem, but in my unscientific experiments, that does not seem to be the case.

However, different fonts have a few different printable characters. The "Extended" keyboard may use a different printable character for option + 8 with some font(s) than with others. dntknw.gif

In any case, here's a <link> that may help explain the differences when using the two keyboards.
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Offline Jack W

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problem with bullet character
« Reply #9 on: June 09, 2007, 07:54:22 PM »
As I said in my opening remarks, it used to work fine until recently.

And it may be related to choosing the "U.S. Extended" set.

Anyway, it's resolved by simply using the "U.S." set.

BTW, I have a standard Apple keyboard that came with the G4 — 15 fun keys, numeric kpd, arrow cluster.

- Jack
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Offline Xairbusdriver

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problem with bullet character
« Reply #10 on: June 10, 2007, 01:51:30 PM »
I thought it was the other way around. But you do understand that "Extended" has nothing to do with which/what physical keyboard you are using, right? It simply reffers to the character set being used ( in whatever language ); the 'plain' ASCII 256 character set or the UNICODE set. While the first 128 characters of both sets are almost identical, the next 128 may not be. And the UNICODE versions can go well past a thousand characters.

But you are saying that Excel still will not show the 'bullet' no matter which keyboard setting you use? dntknw.gif
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Offline Jack W

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problem with bullet character
« Reply #11 on: June 10, 2007, 06:14:36 PM »
QUOTE(Xairbusdriver @ Jun 10 2007, 02:51 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>
But you are saying that Excel still will not show the 'bullet' no matter which keyboard setting you use? dntknw.gif


Xabd,

See my last post — yes it works fine when using the U.S. set.

So problem resolved!

- Jack
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Offline krissel

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« Reply #12 on: June 11, 2007, 01:38:44 AM »
Jack, open your International window and see if in Options you have the boxes checked for using key commands to rotate between the top two selections in that window. (Command + Space)  Or, stepping through all the checked keyboards (Command + Option + Space). That may be how this happened in the first place.

But even now I still can't figure out how I once ended up typing with the Romanian keyboard since I surely never checked the box for that one.  laugh.gif
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Offline Jack W

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« Reply #13 on: June 11, 2007, 02:10:21 PM »
kris,

I must have gotten carried away when I ran Monolingual one time.

And removed the Unicode along with all those oriental and other fonts.

When I "Show Keyboard Viewer" and hold the Option key, most of the keys show blank when using the U.S. Extended keyboard. But they show up the right strokes when using U.S., And this works when typing the keys.

- Jack

•

kris,

I must have gotten carried away when I ran Monolingual one time.

And removed the Unicode along with all those oriental and other fonts.

When I "Show Keyboard Viewer" and hold the Option key, most of the keys show blank when using the U.S. Extended keyboard. But they show up the right strokes when using U.S., And this works when typing the keys.

- Jack

•
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Offline krissel

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« Reply #14 on: June 12, 2007, 01:35:04 AM »
OK.  smile.gif


OK.  smile.gif
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