WD: Incorrect Characters Saving from MacWord as MS-DOS Text (132915)

SYMPTOMS

When a Word for the Macintosh 6.x or later document containing extended characters (characters 128 through 255) is saved as MS-DOS Text or MS-DOS Text With Line Breaks, the extended characters may appear as the wrong extended characters, or as square boxes.

CAUSE

The extended characters are not correctly mapped to IBM Extended Character Set (MS-DOS Code Page 437) equivalents. Characters are straight-mapped to the same ordinal values. For example, Macintosh character 128, the Capital

A Dieresis, is mapped to Code Page 437 character 128, the C Cedilla Capital. It should actually be mapped to Code Page 437 character 142, the equivalent Capital A Dieresis.

WORKAROUND

To work around this problem, use either of the following methods.

Method 1

Search and replace the extended character in your Word document with the numeric character value that coincides with the numeric value of the Code Page 437 character it should have been mapped to.

For example, in the above scenario, you would replace all instances of Macintosh character 128 with Macintosh character 142 and then save as MS- DOS Text or MS-DOS Text With Line Breaks.

NOTE: Remember not to overwrite your original Word document after making these changes.

Method 2

Search and replace these characters with the appropriate Code Page 437 character in your MS-DOS application following conversion.