Inserting Special Characters

Windows Vista provides a special accessory program called Character Map that lets you insert into your programs those characters and symbols that aren't available on your keyboard. Character Map displays all the characters that are available for each of the fonts on your computer.

Find and Insert a Character

Start Character Map from the System Tools folder of the Start menu, or click the Start button, type char in the Search box of the Start menu, and click Character Map to start the program.

Specify a font.

Double-click the character you want to insert. Double-click any other characters that you want to insert at the same time.

Click Copy to place the character or characters on the Clipboard.

Switch to your program, click where you want to insert the character or characters, and choose Paste from the Edit menu (or press Ctrl+V) to paste the character or characters from the Clipboard into your document. Format and edit the inserted text as desired.

See Also

"Turning Windows Components On or Off" on page 242 for information about installing Character Map if it isn't already installed.

Try This!

In Character Map, select a character you insert frequently, and note the keyboard shortcut for the character in the bottom-right corner of the Character Map dialog box. Switch to the program into which you want to insert the character, hold down the Alt key, and use the numeric keypad to enter the numbers. Format the inserted character with a different font or font size if desired.