On my PM G5, when looking at a document in Word 2004 that has a formula in it created in Symbol font, the Symbol characters are not shown and in their place are open squares. Symbol shows in my menu, but it doesn't allow me to create anything in that font. The proper characters in this file are visible on my Cube using the same Word 2004, and they are also visible on the G5 in Word X. I thought that perhaps the Symbol font wasn't properly installed so I looked in the Library and couldn't see the font. I then copied it from an old system X folder (Symbol.dfont) and briefly saw the right characters, but the next time I opened the file in Word 2004 the open boxes were back. Thinking that something was wrong with the font, I opened up FontBook and saw it there. I then inactivated it and reactivated it, but it didn't fix anything. I'm out of ideas for how to fix this, so I'm hoping that one of you has a suggestion. Thanks.

Instead of building an equation from the Symbol font, try using Office's built-in Equation Editor - it really does a tidy job. I used to use it for real when I was at University - Word 5.1 in those days, on my Mac Classic.

In the Insert menu, choose Object, then Microsoft Equation. This launches the Equation Editor.

Cheers :-> Bill

I've had the same problem with Word 2004 using Equation Editor. When I print the page the equation does show up but it is disconcerting not to know what is in the document.

I've had worse problems with improting a Word document with equations into an InDesign file. When I was using Pagemaker 6.5 and Word 98, nver had aproblem with the quality of the text. With InDesign 2 and Word 2004, all equations show up as bit mapped (very ugly). I have a huge publication with ugly equations in it. I may have to go back to Pagemaker and OS 9 to get the equations to print propoely

There's a stupid workaround for that, it should be unnecessary.

When your equations look OK in Word, save the document as a PDF. Place the PDF in InDesign. It will print properly.

This works OK for the occasional formula, or for whole pages, but it sucks for general use. If you're doing this stuff all the time, you can get formula plugins for InDesign, or you can get the full version of MathType (Microsoft Equation Editor is a crippled version).

Cheers :-> Bill