[Solved] Using Chinese and English in Calc

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jamned
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[Solved] Using Chinese and English in Calc

Post by jamned »

I'm Using OpenOffice v 2.4 on Windows XP SP3.

I tried to use Calc to open an Excel 2003 file in which I've used both English and Chinese. I haven't checked, but the character encoding should be Chinese Simplified GB2312. Some Chinese characters show up correctly while others show up as blocks. I checked and confirmed that windows has the relevant language support installed. I couldn't find a language pack for Open Office. What could my problem be?
Last edited by Hagar Delest on Mon Jun 16, 2008 10:41 am, edited 1 time in total.
Reason: tagged the thread as Solved.
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r4zoli
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Re: Using Chinese and English in Calc

Post by r4zoli »

It looks like a font problem, all fonts used in excel file installed on your computer?
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jamned
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Re: Using Chinese and English in Calc

Post by jamned »

That sounds like it could be it. How would I install the excel fonts without installing excel?
OOo 2.4.X on Ms Windows XP + Ubuntu
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r4zoli
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Re: Using Chinese and English in Calc

Post by r4zoli »

One solution, to search for font name, second download MS Excel 2003 viewer, and install. it installs with fonts used in MS Excel, or Excel 2007 viewer, it installs fonts used in Vista.
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jamned
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Re: Using Chinese and English in Calc

Post by jamned »

I installed excel viewer 2007 and that didn't fix the problem. Excel viewer was able to open the files and display them as I had made them.

I don't think it's a font issue because I can see some characters correctly and others display as a box, however when I click on the cell containing Chinese, the edit line displays the Chinese characters fully and correctly.

I didn't notice this before, but all of the simplified characters in my document display as boxes. Chinese has 2 writing schemes: simplified, popularly used in mainland China, and traditional, used widely in Taiwan and Hong Kong. Simplified and Traditional writing schemes are the same for many characters. These characters are displaying correctly, whereas the characters which are different in simplified and traditional display as boxes in the main screen.

If I can upload a picture to the forum server then I'd be happy to do so. What I described might be confusing and I'm sure a picture would help.
OOo 2.4.X on Ms Windows XP + Ubuntu
jamned
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Joined: Thu Jun 05, 2008 7:22 pm

Re: Using Chinese and English in Calc

Post by jamned »

I found out what the problem was. For everyone else's reference:

Under "Tools", "Options", in the "Language Settings" section, there's a box called "Enabled for Asian Languages" that must be checked. This fixed everything. The default install setting leaves this box unchecked.
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