Use Segoe MDL2 Assets and other unicode fonts with Private Use Characters in Visio

Question

Microsoft supplies its Windows iconset as a font now. All icons are part of the subrange "Private Use Characters":

I really enjoy drawing our Windows screen concepts in Microsoft Visio. However, to my disappointment even the newest Visio 2016 16.0.4266.1003 seems not to support those characters while Microsoft Word 2010 does.

Visio shows that behavior:

1. I copy the desired character in the character map application (see screenshot)
2. I paste the desired character in visio
3. Font is Calibri
4. I change the font to Segoe MDL2 Assets
5. Within a split second Visio changes the font back to Calibri

Related question: https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/msoffice/forum/msoffice_visio-mso_win10-mso_2013_release/problems-rendering-segoe-mdl2-assets-in-visio-2013/05afb974-fa65-4d94-9a24-eb3e503a8db7?auth=1

Any ideas to get me working?

Answer 1

You can download the following stencils: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=41937

Then extract it to My Shapes folder (C:\Users\name\Documents\My Shapes). Open Visio 2016, click More Shapes > My Shapes > Microsoft_CloudnEnterprise_Symbols_v2.7KP > Symbols > CnE_GeneralSymbols, select CnE_GeneralSymbolsV2.4.

Select wanted shapes in the stencil.