The Arcane Trick is a bit of a puzzle, as the Word Help file item that I found just before that post now includes stuff that was not previously there when I used the same search term a year (or several) ago.

The use of the Alt-X to read the Hex Code for an unknown character has been added in my Word 2002. Previously, in my Word 2002, the conversion to the glyph was "one way" and they've apparently made it into a "toggle" function.

I did check and verified that it works in my Word 2002, Lin's Word 2003 SP3, and the laptop's Word 2007. I don't have any older versions running to see how far back it goes, but doubt that it will work in Word97, since that version didn't have Unicode char capability the last time I used it and it's unlikely to have been updated.

I've had a macro button that I added to a Word toolbar that tells me the ANSI value (decimal) for chars up to 254, but had not previously been able to get the Microsoft wonk who originally provided it back when we both were using Win98 (Word97)to update it to handle Unicode char codes, and hadn't figured out how to do it myself. (Word has deprecated using macros since the big "macro virus" scare, and objects now when you try to create or edit one. I had to do some updating to get the macro into Word 2002, but that was very minor tweaking.)

The Office "Character Map" should be present in all Office versions, in Programs|Accessories, and you can use it to see all of the characters that a particular font can use. It will show you only the fonts you have installed and only the chars the font can display/print. The selection of which "Character Set" to choose when you look is sort of a puzzle, but usually selecting "Unicode" will give the most complete display of what's possible with a font you have installed. If you have "language specific" special fonts installed, another set may be of some use, and you may have some fonts that don't offer the Unicode selection. Other char display utilities can give you similar info.

John