Special Characters

We have all ran into this issue - You need to insert a character that is not on your keyboard, such as a copyright or degree symbol. Quite often, you might cheat and find a document or web site that has the symbol you need and simply copy it. There is an easy way to get around this and insert these characters into your documents yourself.

The Windows Character Map is the program we need to run to do this.
Click Start -> Programs - > Accessories -> System Tools - > Character Map.

In Character Map, select the font you wish to use in the Font drop-down menu. If you are trying to use a symbol such as a box, scissors, arrow, or star, select the Wingdings font.

Now use the scroll bar to browse through the list of available characters. Click any character once to see an enlarged version of it. Press the Spacebar, click the character once again, or click another character to remove the enlarged version. When you find the character you want to use, double-click it.

After you double-click the character, it is placed in the Windows Clipboard. Click the document you want the symbol in and then click Edit -> Paste.

A Shortcut
If you find that you are using a particular character often, there is an alternate way to insert the character into a document. Each special character has a numeric code associated with it. This numeric code can be seen in the lower-right corner of the Character Map dialog box when you click on the character.

To use the shortcut, you hold down the ALT key while typing in the character code.