I am using LibreOffice 4.1.1.2 on a macbook pro running Mountain Lion. When I open a Word file (doc or docx) that has been sent to me, the default bullets appear as strange square symbols which come under the Symbol font [private use subsection]. I have tried using a font replacement table in the preferences - replacing the Symbol font with OpenSymbol - as this problem has been discussed under the OpenOffice forum. However this doesn't solve it for me.

Word gives you the option to view paragraph marks and other hidden formatting symbols. Basically, this means that you can see where the author of a document has pressed the Return key or Tab or Space, or inserted a forced break or some other formatting.

If I change all the bullets to a simple dot then save as a doc or docx file, when I reopen it they are back as the square glyphs. Only if I save the tile as an.odt file do the changed bullets stay as dots. I work with people usually using Word and want to be able to save my files as Word, work on them as word and share them being confident that odd formatting problems will not show up. How can I solve this? Any ideas out there? I would like to add a picture of the odd bullets that I get, but karma level won't allow me to upload one.

Can you write step by step instructions how you produce the squares. I use LibreOffice 4.0.5 on Windows and can't reproduce this problem. If you can reproduce the problem in step-by-step then I suggest to report a bug at bugtracker: I perfectly well understand that you would like to get as much of the same appearance with MS-Word, I would like to have too. But time to time I just get some corrupted formatted text.

Harman kardon app for mac. The only 100% sure way to get the same result is to have exactly the same tools (this is not specific to LibreOffice). So all users should use MS-Word or LibreOffice Writer.

One other option is to exchange documents in file format that is really a true standard like PDF format - if editing is not needed.