I am trying to use MS Word's Phonetic Guide to place pinyin ruby text over Chinese characters, but Word is automatically generating zhuyin (bopomofo) instead? Can I force it to convert the sounds to pinyin instead?

This problem usually arises when the Chinese characters were inputted using the Traditional (Taiwan) IME. But there is a way to convert this after the fact.

In Word 2003 or earlier, find "Reveal formatting" in the Format menu. In Word 2007, use Word Options to add the "Reveal formatting" button to the Quick Access Toolbar, then click on the button.

Then click on Languages, and change from traditional to simplified or vice-versa. Word should automatically and invisibly do the Unicode conversion for you. The characters won't change, but the underlying code points will. Then try Phonetic Guide again.

I haven't done this very often, but next time I do I will grab some screen shots for this page. I really don't like the Phonetic Guide feature - I prefer fonts with ruby text included - and you may encounter some conversion problems when making this formatting change, but it's worth a try.

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