MS Word 2013: Cannot view More Symbols dialog

Thanks fore the reply.  I just tried the quick repair but it didn't fix this issue.  I will try the online repair that supposedly fixes "all" issues when I can shut office down for a longer period.  

Do you know if the online repair will remove all my settings and customizations (fonts, shortcut keys, added vocab, etc?).  I am hoping it will not, although I am not sure how it can guarantee a repair that fixes all issues without removing even the innocent customizations.  If it does remove this anything I can do to preserve these customizations before doing the full repair so that I can restore them after the fix is applied.

Thanks for your help,

Lawrence

A repair should not remove any customizations. The customizations are stored in data files and in registry entries that are created after the initial installation. The repair checks the files and entries that are created by the initial installation, but it doesn't touch any that were added later.

Still, bad things can happen, and you're right to be careful. Your best protection is a full backup, preferably to an external drive or removable media, that you can restore if something goes wrong. I wouldn't try to isolate just the customizations of Office, because they're scattered in multiple folders and registry keys. Also tell Windows to make a restore point before proceeding.

There are whole classes of problems that can't be fixed by an Office repair, because these problems are caused by the customizations or by corrupted settings that the repair considers to be customizations. However, it's a reasonable first attempt.

Thank you for your help thus far Jay.  I did a full repair via the online, which said it completed successfully, but it didn't help.  I then restarted my computer (even turned it off completely waited a few minutes and turned it back on).  I still cannot open the more symbols dialog.

Any other ideas or fixes?

Lawrence

Just a longshot, but with the first 20 symbols displayed, try pressing the M key.

If that does not help, then you might have to remove all traces of the Office installation by downloading the fixit from the following article:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2739501

saving it to your computer and then running it.

Then reinstall Office by logging into www.office.com/myaccount with your registered email address and click Install Office.

Unfortunately, using the m key doesn't work in this case either.

I guess I will have to try the other one, when I get the chance.

Although I very much appreciate your help in this, I am very annoyed at the software as something like this should never happen.  Until I get a chance to do this I hope I find everything I need in either the equation editor, or the windows character mapping.

Thanks again for your help in trying to find  a fix for this.  

Lawrence

Well I found a work around till I can do this.  I clicked to customize the Ribbon, to check if there was any shortcut keys assigned to the symbol dialog, and since there was NOT, I added one (CTRL+Shift+S), and tried it and it did bring up the dialog to insert a symbol.  Go figure!

Okay, I just tried and all the ribbon icons are now working!  The problem is fixed!  So I guess it reset something (even though there wasn't a key sequence assigned to the symbols).  Very odd but am glad that it is fixed now.  Hope this helps someone else fix the problem too.  Even better, I hope this helps MS fix the problem and in include it as a bug update/fix so it doesn't happen to anyone else.

Thanks again for your help and support.

Lawrence