How to Handle International Characters

Enable Unicode support and choose the right enforcement level and fonts for international characters.

Use these settings when non-English characters render as boxes, question marks, or missing glyphs.

International character support depends on both template settings and font coverage.

Enable Unicode support

1. Open the Document Options tab.
2. Under Other Options, check Template contains international characters (Unicode fonts).
3. Save the template.

If characters still do not render correctly, change the Unicode enforcement level.

Choose a Unicode enforcement level

Level	What it does	Use it for	Performance impact
None	Uses standard character handling	English-only documents	None
Data	Enforces Unicode in merge field output	Western European languages	Minimal
Strict	Applies full Unicode enforcement	Asian, Arabic, Hebrew, or mixed scripts	Moderate

When to use each level

• Use Data for accented Latin characters or Cyrillic text.
• Use Strict for Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Arabic, or Hebrew.
• Start with the lowest level that fixes the issue.

Font guidance

Font choice matters as much as the Unicode setting.

Use fonts with broad international coverage:

• Arial
• Arial Unicode MS
• Calibri
• Tahoma
• Verdana
• Times New Roman

Avoid decorative, script, or specialty fonts when you need reliable multilingual output.

If the setting is correct but characters still fail, switch to a font with wider Unicode coverage first.

Language-specific troubleshooting

Accented characters or Cyrillic

Try basic Unicode support first.

If needed, change the enforcement level to Data.

Chinese, Japanese, or Korean

Set the enforcement level to Strict.

Use a font that supports the required character set.

Arabic or Hebrew

Set the enforcement level to Strict.

Use right-to-left formatting when the document layout requires it.

For right-to-left layout guidance, read How to Work with Right-to-Left Languages.

Quick test content

Use a test block with representative characters before rollout:

Spanish: ñ é í ó ú ü ¿ ¡
French: à è é ê ë ï ô ù û ç
German: ä ö ü ß
Polish: ą ć ę ł ń ó ś ź ż
Chinese: 你好世界
Japanese: こんにちは
Arabic: مرحبا
Russian: Привет

Test with the same font you plan to ship.