BabelMap is a free character map application for Windows that allows you to browse through the entire Unicode character repertoire of nearly 137,000 characters, or search for a particular character by name or by code point.
I may need to change the typeface of every Greek word in my dissertation from Gentium Book to Gentium Plus. That would take a while if I had to do it manually.
I’m going to show you instead how you can do it automatically. I’m going to take you through all my steps to show you how I got the answer, not just what the answer is, starting with step zero. (Sorry, this is just for Windows users right now—I haven’t tried it in Word for Mac because I don’t have it.)
0. Your Greek characters have to be in Unicode already. (For switching BibleWorks Greek to Unicode, use the Word macro that came with BibleWorks—or beg me and I’ll write a post on that.)
1. Open Character Map and check “Advanced View.” Choose the “Unicode” character set from the dropdown box.
2. Now choose “Unicode Subrange” from the “Group by” dropdown box.
3. Choose “Greek” from the little box that pops up. This will show you all the Greek characters in Unicode.
4. Select the very first character in the top left corner, the “Combining Greek Perispomeni” and hit the “Select” button.
5. Now do the same for the very last character at the bottom right (make sure to scroll down to see it), the “Greek Dasia.”
6. After you’ve hit “Select,” hit “Copy” to copy both characters.
7. Now go to your Word document and hit Ctrl+H for the Find and Replace dialogue.
8. Hit the “More” button and make sure to check “Use wildcards.”
9. Paste the two characters you copied from Character Map into the Find box (Ctrl+V).
10. Now surround those two characters with brackets and put a hyphen in between them. The Find and Replace dialogue should look like this:
Now Word will find every character in between those two—in other words, all the Greek characters there are.
11. Make sure not to have anything in the “Replace with” box, not even a space.
12. Click inside the “Replace with” box and then choose the “Format” button. Choose whatever font or character or paragraph style you want.
13. Click “Replace All” if you think you did it all correctly!
14. Smile.
15. Check your document to make sure you didn’t mess up.
That’s it. The same principle will work for any subrange in Unicode—or make your own subrange like [A-Z] for capital letters or [0-9] for numbers.
What will you do if you have no idea about how to input certain special character in your Windows 8 computer? In this article, you are suggested to find and copy it from the system-provided Character Map (see the following picture). Meanwhile, this text will introduce 3 methods to open Windows 8 Character Map in detail.
Video guide on how to open Windows 8 Character Map:
3 ways to open Character Map in Windows 8 computer:
Way 1: Open it through the Search panel.
Step 1: Move the mouse pointer to the top or bottom right corner of the Start screen (also referred to Metro Interface) to open the Charms Menu, and click Search on it to access the Search panel.
Step 2: On the Search bar, choose Apps and enter character map in the blank box. After that, click Character Map in the left searching results.
Way 2: Open Character Map from Apps screen.
Step 1: On the Metro Interface, right-click any blank area and select All apps on the lower right corner.
Step 2: Locate and click Character Map in the Apps screen.
Way 3: Turn on Character Map in Control Panel.
Step 1: Right-tap the bottom left corner of Metro Interface to open the Quick Access Menu, and click Control Panel to get into it.
Step 2: In the top-right search box, input fonts and tap the Fonts folder to open it.
Step 3: When the Fonts window turns up, choose Find a character on the left.
After opening Character Map by one of the above methods, you can find and copy special characters in it.
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