Macintosh

Using MS Word for OS X

Unfortunately, MS Word for OS X does not support Unicode characters. Because this is the case, typing pinyin in Word is challenging and requires a special font. Once you download and install the font, you will be able to use all pinyin characters in Word or PowerPoint.

1. Download the TimesPinyin font from this page: http://www.namkung.com/zev/TimesPinyin.html
2. Open your fonts folder: Open your OS X Home (with the little house icon) > Library > Fonts
3. Copy the downloaded font file into your fonts folder
4. You'll need to close and restart any programs you had open before this font is available

TimesPinyin will allow for bold, italic or bold-italic text. You may notice that you cannot use it to type certain accented vowels because they have been replaced by pinyin vowels (e.g. Ū, Ú, Ǔ, Ù, Ī, Í, Ǐ, Ì). However, should you need these vowels, you can switch to the regular Times font and input them in that font. Since TimesPinyin is based on Times, there should be no noticable difference between the two fonts.

In order to use pinyin, you'll need to make sure you've set Word to use TimesPinyin. Then you can use the following key combinations to input the pinyin characters you need.