Word changes font on some language specific characters while writing

Question

STEPS TO REPRODUCE

* open blank document in Word (or new e-mail message in Outlook)

* enter "This is a sentence with some non-std characters; æ, å and ü are fun"

* observe text formatting

EXPECTED RESULT

* all entered in default font (Calibri)

ACTUAL RESULT

* all text *but* the special characters are entered in Calibri. The others are formatted with Times New Roman

MORE INFO

Æ, ø and å are normal/frequently-used glyphs in Norwegian and have direct/single-key entry on a Norwegian keyboard layout.

For some strange reason, they suddenly appear in Times New Roman!

This is a relatively recent change in behavior—was definitely not like this from the start (Win10 & Office 2016). It could be (but I won't swear it is) related to Win10 anniversary update.

I'm running Win10-64, English OS language, Norwegian locale & regional settings on a Lenovo X1 Yoga.

Office 2016 (MSO 16.0.7127.1026) 32-bit.

Answer 1

UPDATE: I have a solution (though no explanation) :)

This was caused by some bug in the default Normal.dotm (and NormalEmail.dotm for Outlook). I deleted them, Word created new versions, and the problem is gone!

Found this because some eager digging, trying different templates where I could not reproduce the issue. Even simplified back to creating a new document with the "Single spaced (blank)" template that is almost an exact copy of Normal.dotm (just with less spacing in the "Normal" paragraph style. This lead me to believe the issue was with Normal.dotm. After disabling it (renaming to ".dotm_"), Word re-created the file, and now the problem is gone!

Would someone at Microsoft be interested in looking at my original Normal.dotm to try to debug?

I have kept the file and I'm able to reproduce the issue using that template.

Best regards,

Henrik

Answer 2

performation,

the quickest route to the template files is just to tap Win-R (windows key + R, or right-click start + "Run") and paste in

%appdata%\Microsoft\Templates

Hit OK; that takes you directly to the correct folder of your active profile/user.

(from there, either delete Normal.dotm and NormalEmail.dotm, or - to be on the safe side, move them out to your desktop or simply rename them to .dotm_old or something; Word will recreate the files when restarting. Do exit Word & Outlook before deleting/moving/renaming the files, though)

Answer 3

Hi,

We would like to know more about your concern. Are you experiencing the same issue as with HenriBakken? How are you entering your data? Are you manually typing the data or copying and pasting it from a different source?

Regards.

Answer 4

I have the same problem after re-installing windows on my machine. I have already tried re-installing office but had no success. Even tried Office insider builds, but the issue persists. Any ideas what I can do? Thanks.

Answer 5

This might not be surprising if the characters were not present in the default font, but there is certainly no excuse for it with these characters in Calibri. This is happening with all new documents but is not the case in documents created before the Anniversary Update?