Say goodbye to square boxes in Office documents

Jul 22, 2017 08:03 GMT  ·  By

Emojis appear to be a priority for Microsoft, as the company is rolling out several improvements to the small smiley faces in its operating systems every once in a while, and today it’s bringing the Windows 10 experience on Windows 7 with an Office update.

@SwiftOnSecurity was the first to spot the update, with Microsoft itself explaining that the new Office 2016 update indeed brings emoticons in documents on Windows 7.

The update, however, doesn’t bring emoji in the operating system per se, but only in Office documents, addressing an issue that many people complained about in the previous versions. Microsoft explains that in many cases, emojis looked like black boxes in Office, so with this update, this issue is finally fixed with the help of a new font that’s automatically instead in the system and used by the productivity suite.

“Emojis are sometimes displayed as square boxes in Office 2016 applications in Windows 7. This issue occurs because Office 2016 applications request Emojis to be displayed in the Segoe UI Emoji font, and the font is missing in Windows 7. This update installs the Segoe UI Emoji font,” Microsoft says.

Available for most Office versions

The update is available for both 32-bit and 64-bit versions of the productivity suite, and it can be installed for the majority of Office versions, including Professional and Professional Plus.

As far as Windows 10 users are concerned, they are also getting their own share of improvements for the emoji experience, with Microsoft revamping the full touch keyboard and introducing new ways to insert smiley faces into conversations.

At this point, all these tweaks are only available for users who are participating in the Windows Inside program, but systems in the production ring should receive them as well in September when the Windows 10 Creators Update is finalized. Of course, these improvements will be exclusively available for Windows 10 users and no other Windows version would get them.