Accessing Special Characters with the Character Map
From time to time, you will want to include certain special characters in your documents for which there is no key on your keyboard. These include characters such as the copyright symbol ©, the degree symbol (98.6°), the trademark symbol (™), a bullet point (•), an accented é (José) and so forth.
While some Microsoft Office programs such as Microsoft Word allow you to choose Insert > Symbol to import special characters, you may need to access special characters from a variety of programs like Outlook, Quark Xpress, Photoshop, or Adobe InDesign. Programs like InDesign and Quark Xpress have their own methods for inserting special characters, but the method I will show you now works in any of these programs, as long as you are on a Windows PC.
Most fonts do contain these special characters, but accessing them can be difficult unless you know a special keyboard code. This keyboard code is kind of like a basic language of fonts which Windows speaks behind the scenes. What I am about to show you not only works in Word and Quark, it works in any Windows application whatsoever as long as the insertion point of your cursor is in a location where you can type text. Try these steps…
First, be sure that your Num Lock key is turned on.
Hold down the ALT key and type 0169 on the numeric keypad (on the right side of the keyboard).
When you let go of the ALT key, you will see a © copyright symbol appear.
Hold down the ALT key and type 0233 on the numeric keypad, When you release the ALT key, you will insert the é.
Hold down the ALT key and type 0176 on the numeric keypad and release the ALT key. This will insert the degree symbol.
Magic, no? Most special characters like the ones you just did have a character code that you can enter by holding down the ALT key and typing the code on the numeric keypad. This shortcut is a systemshortcut, not particular to any oneprogram, so it should work in just about any application that you run on your PC.
Now you may be wondering if there is a list somewhere of all of these little codes, and naturally, there is. For a complete reference to the codes for special characters in every font, you can go to the Character Map.
Click on the Start button and select Start > Accessories > System Tools > Character Map.
This will open the Character Map utility. Notice that the Character Map allows you to select different fonts to preview all of the characters in those fonts. When you click on the different characters inside of the window, you will see code information about that character.
Click the copyright symbol.
Note that in the lower right corner of the box, you will see the words Keystroke: Alt+0169. This is the keyboard code for inserting this special character anywhere in Windows.
Alas, not every single character has a numeric keypad keyboard shortcut, but many do. Also, remember that depending on who created the font, it may not actually contain a representation of every single special character. For example, a custom font you download from the internet may not have defined a character (such as the ©). Most fonts will.
You can look through this list, click on a character that you want to be able to insert, and you can take note the code. I won’t make a list of all of the codes since you can very easily find the codes for the characters you want to use all of the time, print them out, and keep them by your desk. You can probably also find such lists on the web if you poke around. Then you can impress your friends and coworkers with your amazing computer voodoo!