I am using Excel 2003 and VBA 6.5

Recently I have been automatically converting text in cells that are
formatted with the Symbol Font set to unicode when the subroutine

Private Sub Workbook_SheetChange(ByVal Sh As Object, ByVal Target As Range)

is triggered. I am changing the text and fonts by using the
range.characters. This all works fine. The only problem is that it is slow
when there is a large amount of text pasted a the cell.

But the mystery deepens - if I click on the Dialog "Insert, Symbol" then
repeat the same task - my program is lightening fast. I think somehow the
dialog is cacheing the font set in Excel and this is why it is faster.

Is there a way I can do this programatically without telling the users to
click on Insert, Symbol first before doing tasks that would be slow.