How To Use Ligatures In Ms Word?

Hi!

NB: Sorry for this really off-topic topic, but I have asked on 4 different forums specialized in fonts, and I had no answer. As I know the majority here is well experienced in a lot of stuff, I hope you will authorize me to let this topic open - and maybe reply positively. Thanks for your kind help!

I own 'Adobe OpenType' fonts, and I'd like to use 'Adobe Garamond Pro' in Microsoft Word XP. All is fine.

The problem is I cannot use some 'ligatures' (special fonts such as cs, ct, fl, fl, ffl...). The insertion of special symbols does not work (ligatures do not appear here).

How to do, then?

Thanks in advance and best regards,

Donatello

#87511

I haven't dealt with ligatures in years. But, have you tried to manually enter the ALT + ### of the ones that you require? Perhaps a search and replace would do the trick? Also, this is from the help in Word:

Select diacritics or ligated characters

The feature described in this Help topic is only available if support for a right-to-left language, such as Arabic, is enabled through Microsoft Office Language Settings.

In your file, click to the left of the character whose diacritic or ligation you want to select.

Hold down the SHIFT key, and then press the RIGHT ARROW or LEFT ARROW key once for each diacritic or ligation.

I tried the above method and it definitely works although having to do this to each and every ligature that you want is a serious pain, especially when it comes to long documents.

#87514

Thanks for your reply, DTOXX.

I had checked previously MS Support, in order to see what they advise. The problem is I want to use those ligatures for a left-to-right language (French in fact). The article you copy is only available for right-to-left languages.

This will not solve my problem, but I appreciate a lot your help.

New thinks tested now:

1/ I have checked (with MS Word) the fonts I have on my HD: Adobe Garamond Pro will not show its ligatures with MS Word system. But for other fonts, such as Garamond, there is an additional font of the same family, called 'GaramondExp' where ligatures are stored. The problem is I cannot see the ligatures at all for Adobe Garamond Pro - and as a consequence, even if I try to guess the numbers (ALT+XXXX), nothing good goes out.

2/ I have installed Adobe InCopy 2.0, and the ligatures can be applied with an option that make all the elements of the fonts appear. Great. But when I try to copy this to Word, the special fonts (ligatures) are not copied. Bad.

3/ Then if it is OK with InCopy, why do I want to use Word? The problem is that a friend of mine has got a work for a scientific review, and she (nor her laboratory) cannot buy InCopy. She's got MS Word. I need to find a solution with Word.

4/ Maybe if I try to make a special font with FontLab TypeTool (someone knows how to use it?).

Well well, all comments are welcome...

Thanks again, DTOXX!

Cheers,

Don.

#87566

Here is the answer, too simple, for those who cpuld be interested in it:

Copy them from the Character Map (Accessories - System Tools -

Character Map) and then paste it to Word.

Cheers,

Don.

#89716