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Many symbols do not appear in MathType, but appear in the document

Applicability

The information on this page applies to:

MathType for Windows

All supported versions of Windows

Issue

You're writing a paper, and you notice some symbols aren't showing up when you create the equation in MathType, but when you insert the equation into the document, everything appears normal.

Reason

The system locale setting on Windows' Region configuration dialogue is the key. In some Windows environments, the option Beta: Use Unicode UTF-8 for worldwide language support is enabled and seems like a good thing, but this might cause many characters to be unavailable to MathType

If you check the symbols available in MathType Insert Symbol dialogue (public through the Edit menu), you'll see this…

symbol_font_missing_characters.png

…when it should look like this:

symbol_font_all_characters.png

Symbol font is shown in the screenshots, but several fonts happen.

Solution

Note

Save your work and close your programs before trying this process. At the end of the steps, you will need to restart the computer.

  1. Open the Region settings from Control Panel. One way to do that is to press and release the Windows logo key on the keyboard – windows_logo.gif – or click the Start menu icon on the taskbar. Then type control , and you'll see Control Panel appear at the top of the list. Click it.

  2. When the Control Panel opens, find the View by setting near the upper right. If it reads Category, click the word Category and select either Large icons or Small icons.

  3. Find Region and click it to open the Region dialogue. Click the Administrative tab.

  4. In the section Language for non-Unicode programs, click Change system locale.

    control_panel_settings_for_region.png
  5. In the Region Settings dialogue, uncheck the box Beta: Use Unicode UTF-8 for worldwide language support. Click OK once it's deselected.

    region_settings.png
  6. The following dialogue will ask you to restart the computer. If you saved your work and closed your programs, click Restart now. If you'd instead continue working, it's ok to Cancel. Doing so will not undo the changes you made in the steps above, but they will not take effect until you restart. Thus, the symbols you need in MathType will not be available yet.

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We hope this has been helpful. As always, please let us know if you have questions about this or if you have additional techniques that work. We'd love to hear from you.