Wingdings Translator

Common questions

Why do some Wingdings symbols show as empty boxes?

Because your device has no font covering that codepoint. These symbols are characters rather than pictures, so drawing them is the system's job: an empty box means the character arrived intact and nothing on hand can draw it. The chart on this page names each symbol and prints its codepoint, so you can tell what a box would have been, and the person you send it to may well see the symbol you cannot.

Do I need to install the Wingdings font?

Not to use this page. Nothing here loads the font or needs it: each character is translated to the Unicode codepoint that encodes the same glyph, which is why the result can be pasted into a form, a message or a document and stay the same character. If you want the classic look inside a word processor, type the plain letters there and set them to Wingdings, and the font draws the same glyph from the letter.

What happens to characters Wingdings does not cover?

They are left exactly as typed, and counted. Wingdings covers the printable characters of a keyboard: the letters, the digits, the punctuation and the space. An accented letter, another alphabet or an emoji has no place in it, so it passes through untouched rather than being dropped or approximated, and the count beside Left as typed tells you how many did.

Is the translation reversible?

Yes for anything you type. Press Swap, or choose Symbols to text, and every symbol becomes the character it came from. There is one exception worth knowing: a Wingdings symbol you paste into the text side before translating is already a symbol, so going to symbols steps over it, and reading back then gives the letter it stands for.

Why do capital and lower case letters give different symbols?

Because Wingdings puts a different glyph on every position. The capitals from A to I are hands, J to L are the three faces, and the lower case letters from a to i carry the zodiac signs from Cancer to Pisces. J is ☺, which is where the stray J at the end of an old email comes from: the smiley was written as a Wingdings J and the font did not survive the trip.

Can I read Wingdings text copied out of a document?

Usually, yes. A word processor stores Wingdings in the private use area from U+F020 upwards, so text copied out of one arrives as characters no ordinary font draws. Choose Symbols to text and paste it in: everything a keyboard can type comes back as the letter it stands for. The font also has an upper half of arrows, clock faces and circled numbers that no key produces, and this page leaves those as they are.