For over a year, I've been fighting the font Symbol, while using MathType & Indesign on Leopard OS X. I've tried many possible solutions — reinstalling fonts, buying new fonts, etc. None of it worked. I even considered making my own font a time or two.

Last week I got a new computer and set about reinstalling my fonts. It still wasn't viewing, exporting, or printing properly from InDesign, so I called MathType yesterday to ask how the fonts work and found that you can insert individual symbols/characters. At the time, I thought, "Oh, that's nice."

I started work this morning with the same problem, then suddenly realized that the "insert symbol" was the solution I've been trying to find. There is now no need to switch fonts! If there is a character that doesn't work in the Symbol font, I can simply replace that character with a font that does print correctly from InDesign.

Where and How — Symbol doesn't always print or export as the correct characters from InDesign. It shows up in MathType as the right character on screen, but not in InDesign.

Example: Pi in the font Symbol from MathType shows up as a "not equal to" character in InDesign.

(Pi in the font Symbol as it appears, prints, and exports in Indesign from Leopard.)

In MathType, select the charater you want to replace, in my case 'pi,' and go to Edit > Insert Symbol. Select the font you want to use instead of Symbol, then the character itself and double click or "Insert." This will replace the character in question.

I then place my MathType files in InDesign and export to PDF. It should print correctly if the font you choose to replace symbol normally prints the character.

Take notice that you can apply keyboard shortcuts to the characters you want to insert. 

Fonts can be so fickle and the only gliche I can think of with this solution is the fact that if you load/change file preferences which could potentially cancel out the character. The character would need to be inserted again if that happens. I hope to do some testing to find out, but for now it works.

(I tried replacing the font Symbol with Euclid Symbol. It changes the spacing and messes with the parenthesis, but could work.)