Unicode characters display as red (Word 2016)

Ivy_S · #1 11-13-2016, 11:47 AM

When I use IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) diacritics in Word 2016, they display as red. Example attached. I recognize that this is because of file encoding types. However, none of the encoding types appear to support these characters.

The problem is that when exporting to pdf, the diacritics also show up red in the pdf. I might be able to edit the colour of the diacritics in Acrobat, but I would prefer to do it in Word. Is there a way in Word to change the red unicode characters to default/black?

Thanks in advance for any advice!

macropod · #2 11-13-2016, 01:17 PM

The red for the diacritics is because that is how you have Word configured. Go to File|Options|Advanced>Show document content>Diacritics>Use this color for diacritics and either uncheck the option or choose a different colour.

Ivy_S · #3 11-13-2016, 01:57 PM

Paul, thanks very much for your reply!

I wonder if you're referring to a different version of Word (I'm using 2016)? See attached for the options in Show Document Content that I see. I can't find an option for diacritic colour anywhere in any of the option groups (unless I'm somehow missing something obvious).

The information I had seen was the diacritics are in red because Word is marking them as 'unsavable' in the selected encoding standard, none of which seem to work, including the various Unicode ones (!). I believe this is where the issue lies. I just wish I could suppress the red colour. I hope I'm just missing something obvious!

macropod · #4 11-13-2016, 02:16 PM

AFAIK, the Diacritics>Use this color for diacritics option appears on any system configured to use a right-to-left language and appears only for languages that use them in a document containing diacritics. If you're using a non-standard font, I suppose it's also possible the colouring is an attribute of the font itself.

Ivy_S · #5 11-13-2016, 02:35 PM

In Word 2016, the diacritics are red in any font, including for example Times New Roman, Calibri, or various fonts designed specifically for use with IPA. They show as the default colour (i.e., black) in other apps, for example Word Pad and Publisher 2016.

I'm just baffled.

macropod · #6 11-13-2016, 03:20 PM

I guess it's possible Word 2016 has the option somewhere else. Here's a workaround:
• Press Alt-F11 to open up Word's VB Editor
• Paste the following line into the main window -
Sub SetDiacritics(): Options.UseDiffDiacColor = False: End Sub
• Press F5
• Press Alt-F11 to return to the document. Hopefully, your diacritics will now display normally.

Note: when you close the document, Word will warn about the presence of a macro. Ignore the warning and save normally, which will delete the above code but leave the updated settings intact.

Ivy_S · #7 11-13-2016, 03:33 PM

Thank you Paul, that did work!

I wonder if the option is just hiding from me somewhere else? I will keep looking, but thank you so much for your help with this workaround. Very much appreciated!

Guessed · #8 11-13-2016, 04:22 PM

The GUI shows and hides various settings depending on languages installed and other regional settings but everything 'should' be controllable by macros regardless of what the GUI shows. I don't see the options that Paul showed in his screen grab but there are some vba commands that appear to have potential.

Code:

  Options.ShowDiacritics = Not Options.ShowDiacritics
  Options.DiacriticColorVal = wdColorBlack  'or RGB(0,0,0)
  ActiveDocument.Range.Font.DiacriticColor = wdColorBlack

Note that the first line works to toggle the visibility of diacritics on my machine but the next two lines don't appear to have any visible effect on my machine but may work for you. You may have more luck than me (my diacritics were already black and fiddling with those values didn't change that)

EDIT: Ahh, I see Paul has found the right setting. Now I can dial in different colours for diacritics or not.

Ivy_S · #9 11-14-2016, 12:24 PM

Thanks for those additional commands, Andrew. Cheers!

OrAnger · #10 09-01-2021, 08:20 AM

This thread has a long time and has a solution with VBA.
I found that not everyone has by default the option to change diacritics colour. If we add any Arabic dictionary it becomes available, not sure why, but worked for me.

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