9

I'm using Word Online in Ubuntu and the bullet points don't appear correctly. This is what it looks like in Firefox:

enter image description here

How can I fix this?

bmaupin
  • 4,782
  • 1
  • 44
  • 68

3 Answers3

12

Update

I submitted a bug report and this issue has been fixed as of Firefox 68.

This issue originally affected all browsers, but Microsoft fixed it for Chrome by adding downloadable versions of the fonts to the Word Online site.

The workaround is below in case this is still broken for other browsers.

Workaround

  1. Install the missing fonts locally

    mkdir -p ~/.fonts/
wget https://source.winehq.org/git/wine.git/blob/HEAD:/fonts/symbol.ttf -O ~/.fonts/symbol.ttf
wget https://source.winehq.org/git/wine.git/blob/HEAD:/fonts/wingding.ttf -O ~/.fonts/wingding.ttf
wget https://bmaupin.github.io/askubuntu-983191-research/symbol_msfontservice.ttf -O ~/.fonts/symbol_msfontservice.ttf
wget https://bmaupin.github.io/askubuntu-983191-research/wingdings_msfontservice.ttf -O ~/.fonts/wingdings_msfontservice.ttf
fc-cache -f -v

  2. Once that's done, the bullet points should be fixed:

    enter image description here

Details

Examining the source of the page, here's the information on the various bullet points:

  • First level
    • Character: unicode f0b7 ()
    • Font: Symbol
  • Second level
    • Character: o
    • Font: Courier New
  • Third level
    • Character: unicode f0a7 ()
    • Font: Wingdings

You can find more details than you ever wanted to know about this issue here: https://github.com/bmaupin/askubuntu-983191-research#readme

bmaupin
  • 4,782
  • 1
  • 44
  • 68
  • 1
    Thanks. This made it work for me in Chrome, but not Firefox. Any idea about making it work for the latter? – bit-pirate Aug 06 '18 at 09:21
  • This has improved the amount of bullet characters available to me, but the default solid black bullet (symbol f0b7) is still unavailable for me. Ubuntu 18.04, Firefox. – Dean Mar 05 '19 at 14:07
  • I spent some time digging into the issue and I've come up with a viable workaround for Firefox. I've updated my answer to reflect that. Thanks for pointing it out! – bmaupin Mar 08 '19 at 17:07
  • This problem happened in Firefox 83.0, and your solution fixed it – 7hibault Dec 07 '20 at 10:39
2

I have the same issue, tried your solution, but the problem remained. It was as though the wingdings is not well installed.

Word Online: In Word Online, selecting: bullets / Define new bullet / Wingdings

LibreOffice: In LibreOffice, inserting special character

What succeeded at fixing it was to download the font from https://github.com/IamDH4/ttf-wps-fonts/blob/master/wingding.ttf. I placed it directly in /usr/share/fonts/truetype/. Then I ran:

sudo fc-cache -rv
Eliah Kagan
  • 116,445
  • 54
  • 318
  • 493
Pierre Soubourou
  • 21
  • 1
  • I just managed to fix it ! I downloaded the font from : "https://github.com/IamDH4/ttf-wps-fonts/blob/master/wingding.ttf", I placed it directly in "/usr/share/fonts/truetype/", then I ran : "sudo fc-cache -rv" – Pierre Soubourou Dec 05 '17 at 16:20
  • I found Symbol and Wingdings in other places online but I'm not sure about their licensing. The fonts from Wine work and have an open license. Did you close/repoen your browser afterward? that part's important. Also, your system should pick up fonts in ~/.fonts without having to edit system-wide fonts. What browser are you using? The answer I posted worked in Chrome and Firefox. – bmaupin Dec 05 '17 at 18:56
  • Tried getting the fonts from this github repository and from the Wine package as detailed in the previous answer. Both do fix many of the missing characters in Word Online. However neither of them fix the issue with the default bullet character for me. – Dean Mar 05 '19 at 14:19
1

I already had wine installed, so this worked for me:

cd ~/.fonts
ln -s /usr/share/wine/fonts wine
fc-cache

I didn't even have to restart Firefox.

Chris
  • 121
  • 6