Right Arrow Woes

July 27, 2012 1:55 PM

In a Word document, I'm trying to get a simple right arrow symbol in Times New Roman. However, pasting it in from the Character Viewer inserts it as Arial Italic. Changing it back to Times in Word has no effect - it goes back to Arial immediately. How can I get around this?

I'm running Office 2011 on OS X 10.6, and I'm trying to paste in this symbol. I've also tried pasting to TextEdit (where it pastes as Times) and then pasting into Word. None of the Paste Special... options work, nor does "Paste and Match Formatting" - it always is inserted as irreversible Arial!

posted by Yiggs to computers & internet (7 answers total)

Is the character viewer the same as insert symbol? Meaning: insert (control i), symbol (control s, or click on Symbol / More Symbols ...). When I pull up that screen and request font = symbol, and then click on the right arrow, it looks like Times Roman to me.
posted by ClaudiaCenter at 2:01 PM on July 27, 2012

Does typing 2192, then pressing Alt-X work?

Is there any text nearby that's in Arial that it's pulling that font from? Maybe a non-printable character? (You can see them by pressing Ctrl-*.)

It's particularly odd that you can't select it and change the font. Can you paste it properly into a different document?
posted by Fretful Porpentine at 2:13 PM on July 27, 2012

In the Character Viewer, did you select a right-arrow that is in the Times New Roman set? There are several that aren't included in Times NR.

This one is in the TNR set, and I confirmed that it pastes into Word as TNR
→ Unicode 2192
posted by Thorzdad at 2:38 PM on July 27, 2012

If you open Insert -> Symbol -> Advanced, and choose Times New Roman, there is no arrow symbol.

Does it really matter what font the Arrow is?
posted by wongcorgi at 2:59 PM on July 27, 2012

Type --> and Word will build you an arrow.
posted by trinity8-director at 3:23 PM on July 27, 2012 [2 favorites]

Arial Unicoe MS is the fallback -- has almost every character in the world!!! -- font on Microsoft machines. It could be that Office on the Mac isn't using all of the available Mac fonts, so you see it in the Character Viewer and can paste it into TextMate and it's all Mac fonts and it's all good. But when you paste it into Office where the Times New Roman doesn't have that character that if falls back to Arial Unicode MS. Office may only be seeing MS fonts.
posted by zengargoyle at 3:32 PM on July 27, 2012

Thanks for all the responses! For whatever reason, it seems like Insert Symbol has only a few large, blocky arrows available (the one I linked to should be available in Times New Roman, I think... maybe my font wasn't fully installed or doesn't feature all symbols?). While not ideal, I think they should work. (The "-->" trick is great too, though it also inserts a bulky arrow).

Thanks!
posted by Yiggs at 3:46 PM on July 27, 2012