How to differentiate "working" Unicode characters from "non-working"

[danielleonyett]

Hi

I'm not 100% on lingo, so I will put some words in quotes if I think there might be a better term that I'm not aware of or can't think of.

I've made a list of A LOT of Unicode characters. It seems that most of the Unicode characters are not "supported" by the font, which is fine, I don't want to change the font. They just show up as a rectangle or a box with a question mark inside, even though Excel still "sees" them as unique Unicode characters. I'd like to be able to somehow distinguish those "non-working" Unicode characters from the others. I've tried copying and pasting just the values so I can try to sort the column of characters (hoping that all the boxes with question marks will be sorted together & easier to remove), but Excel still "sees" them as unique Unicode characters so it won't sort them by how they appear to me. It will take WAY too long to just scroll through visually and remove them. I don't see any way to do it with functions so I'm wondering if anyone knows if there is another way to do this.

[Leith Ross]

Hello danielleonyett,

Welcome to the forum!

It is not clear in your post where these characters appear: Worksheet, VBA code, both.

I take your statement "non-working" Unicode to be characters that belong to the extended ANSI Code Page set. Can you post a list of the characters that are "working" so I can confirm this?

[danielleonyett]

Hi Leith!

I am just using a worksheet right now. I have column A numbered 1 to 100,000. Column B is just =Unichar(A1) through =Unichar(A100000). Many of the Unicode characters don't "work" and just show up as a rectangle or a rectangle with a question mark inside. This is fine. Different fonts allow for different symbols to "render". I just want to be able to easily separate the "working" characters from the "non-working". I've tried to copy column B and paste just the values to column C, then sort the values with the hopes that all the "non-working" characters would end up sorted together. But it doesn't work. I'm not very familiar with VBA code, so I'm hoping maybe someone can tell me if it's even possible.

[Leith Ross]

Hello danielleonyett,


I seriously doubt you need all the Unicode characters. You need to constrain the Unicode blocks to match the languages you have installed on your computer. This can be done using VBA and Windows API. Because this code is rather complex to write, I have to ask what it is you are wanting to do. There may be a simpler way to do it.

[danielleonyett]

Hi Leith,

I want to create a list of all the Unicode characters that "work" for the font I am using, "Segoe Script". I found online what looks like a complete list of working Unicode characters for the "Segoe UI" font, but it doesn't completely match up.