ALT Codes

There are some characters that are not present on the keyboard, so to be able to 'type' them isn't straight forward. Here are your options:

Windows Character Map

Press the Windows key and type Character Map - here you can find all the characters visually if you know the Character Set they belong to.

Use Alt Codes - Keyboard Shortcuts

Use numeric shortcuts known as ALT Codes - Simply:

• Make sure Num Lock is ON
• Hold down the ALT Key
• Type the relevant number on the numeric keypad
• Release the ALT key

* These should work if your system locale is set to English (United States).

Alt Codes - A Brief History

Most people won't need to know or care about the technicalities or history of why these work, but here is a very brief summary.

Different usage requirements and languages need to use different sets of characters. A Code Page defines which characters represent the numbers the computer understands.

The ultimate set of characters recognised globally now is Unicode however not all systems and applications have been updated to use it.

The legacy character sets are still embedded in systems, and also in people's mental muscle memory as ALT Codes.

The set of characters listed in the table above will work as ALT Codes if your system locale is set to English (United States).

The list is a combination of characters from:

• Code Page 437 - The codes with no leading zero. Used on the original IBM PC and DOS. Also known as CP437, OEM-US, OEM 437, PC-8, or DOS Latin US, OEM Encoded.
• Code Page 1252 - The codes with a leading zero. Built into early Windows based on a draft version of ANSI ISO 8859-1. Also known as Windows Code Page 1252, CP-1252, Windows-1252 or Windows Encoded.