Symbol show up as blank squares?

alright so basicly i was on my computer with windows 7 and i could see all these symbols example this one ★ (black star) anyway when im on my current computer which is pretty old (windows XP) it shows up as a blank white square.

Is there something i could download that has these characters or something so that it will make it show up? its annoying

Thank You

 

Greetings, THE_CANADIAN.

Probably a difference in system fonts. You'll have to drill down and find what font is being used by the specific program that displays the star symbol, and load that font on the problem machine.

 

http://www.fileformat.info seems to be a great reference website for fonts, along with other things. The page about the black star can be found here:
http://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/char/2605/browsertest.htm

That page links to the Font Support Page which states that the default font for that character is called Arial Unicode MS.

Now you know what you're missing, you need to see where you can get it from. Here are some options:
1. This page is the official list of programs that come packaged with that font, in case you already own the software you need:
http://www.microsoft.com/typography/fonts/font.aspx?FMID=1081
2. The same link allows you to purchase the font for the low, low price of just $99 dollars!
3. The Font Support Page mentioned earlier lists some alternative fonts that support that character, and some of those are probably free.
4. You could also search your Windows 7 computer for ARIALUNI.TTF, then extract that file from the cab file its stored in (might need a zip program like jZip). I haven't a clue on the legality of this as it might be considered a piece of windows, and new windows licenses state you're not allowed to have two computers running the same windows software with just 1 license. It's certainly a lot better than the alternative of downloading the font by conducting a web search for ARIALUNI.TTF torrent. That would be very unscrupulous indeed.

Whichever route you take (excluding installing a program that includes the font) you will ultimately need to follow this article to install the font:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314960

 

i have that Arial Unicode MS font... it still doesnt come up in microsoft word or internet explorer. when i put it into msn messenger for instance its fine.

Im confused about this... :\

 

Well darn it!

The good news is my XP machine just shows the squares too - so if I can get mine to work, we can hopefully use the process to make yours work.

I'm on my way out right now, but I'm wondering if the problem is that another font is claiming that character by default. As that font doesn't have that character it just shows the little white box.

 

Hopefully we have the solution now. My main post stands, and the steps in this one just extends it.

Internet Explorer defaults to Times New Roman when no font is specifically named on a web page. Instead we're going to set it to default to the new font we installed in my main post:
1. Open Internet Explorer
2. Click Tools
3. Click Internet Options
4. Click Fonts
5. In the lefthand pane labelled Webpage Font highlight Arial Unicode MS
6. Click OK on the Font window
7. Click OK on the Internet Options window

To enter the black star in Microsoft word:
1. Open Microsoft Word
2. Click Insert
3. Click Symbol
4. Select Arial Unicode MS under Font
5. Select Miscellaneous Dingbats under Subset
6. The sixth character should be your Black Star (★)

That should be all you need to do to see the black star in your first post, along with the other characters you weren't able to see.

I can't copy and paste text directly from IE8 to MS Word 2002 XP, but that's true regardless of my font - using Paste Special and selecting anything other than HTML format is successful however. I can however copy and paste to MS Word 2002 XP from Firefox and Chrome, and they default to Times New Roman and Arial respectively. If you do so and get the white box in Word rather than the character you were expecting, remember to highlight the white box and select the font Arial Unicode MS.