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

Unfortunately, deleting the Normal.dotm and NormalEmail.dotm doesn't do it for me with Swedish characters. It's really strange but when copying a table with special characters (å, ä and ö, or the capital versions), the font changed from the standard Times New Roman to Helvetica. After the next special character, it changes back. 

After deleting the Normal.dotm, this has disappeared, but when I generate a an index, it's still very real, and happens every time with changing from Calibri to Helvetica: 

Answer 3

Worked for me too - typing German with the English UI.

Answer 4

Thank you!!! You have saved my day!

Lukas

Answer 5

Worked for me, thanks a lot, drove me crazy for weeks now :)