PowerPoint: Bug or Easter egg?

Miguel Sousa13 February 2006 · 03:24

OK, what I’m about to say might sound like a complete nonsense, but this thing has been bugging me for the past week and a half, and so far I haven’t been able to come up with a better explanation. So, here it goes:

Is it just me, or fonts with names that include the sequence ’ding’ do not work properly in MS PowerPoint 2004 for Mac (v11.2)?

I mean, I’ve generated and tested several dozen fonts, and I always arrive to the same result: In all the ’ding’ fonts, the access to characters outside the ASCII-area is completely messed up.

Is PowerPoint treating these fonts as if they were dingbat fonts?

Mark Simonson13 February 2006 · 06:53

I can confirm that Wedding Text has the problem you describe. This is with PowerPoint 10.1.0. Sounds like you need to rename your font if you want to use it with PowerPoint.

Miguel Sousa13 February 2006 · 07:58

Thanks Mark!
(It’s good to know I’m not completely crazy ;^)

Si_Daniels13 February 2006 · 08:02

I passed this information on the Mac Business Unit and a contact down in MS SVC. In the unlikely event that they didn’t know about it they do now.

Cheers, Si

Miguel Sousa13 February 2006 · 08:11

Thanks Simon!

In the unlikely event that they didn’t know about it they do now.

If that was the case, I wish they would have told us about it before. It would have spared me the extra grey hair I gained this past week :^/

Si_Daniels13 February 2006 · 14:27

From the replies they’ve provided it doesn’t seem to have been a previously reported problem - a tester has now been assigned to investigate the problem.

Miguel Sousa13 February 2006 · 15:40

Thank you again Simon.
Please keep us posted.

Miguel Sousa19 June 2006 · 12:42

The newly Microsoft Office 2004 for Mac 11.2.4 Update did not address this issue :(

brew20 June 2006 · 01:08

I vaguely remember hearing something about this before... but I can’t remember where. Something about a hard-coded bit of legacy code in Office to identify dingbat fonts by name. Perhaps to order them with each other on the font menu? I wish I could remember where and from whom I heard this.

Si_Daniels20 June 2006 · 13:28

I’ll get back on to them.

Cheers, Si

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