Typing Foreign Key characters in a Standard Keyboard

Have you ever wanted to know how to type letters with umlauts (those two little dots) on them? Or maybe you want to know how to type that upside down question mark¿ Well look no further, because this article will show you how to type all of those characters and more!

Steps

If you want to type the Ç symbol, hold down the ALT button on the lower right hand side of your keyboard and type 128 in the numbers keyboard on the left hand side of the keyboard (yes that part does have a purpose)and release the ALT key. Refer to the chart below for other number-symbol combinations and follow the above process for typing them but substitute the number given for the desired symbol.

1. ALT 128 Ç (Cedille- French)
2. ALT 129 ü
3. ALT 130 é
4. ALT 131 â
5. ALT 132 ä
6. ALT 133 à
7. ALT 134 å
8. ALT 135 ç
9. ALT 136 ê
10. ALT 137 ë
11. ALT 138 è
12. ALT 139 ï
13. ALT 140 î
14. ALT 141 ì
15. ALT 142 Ä
16. ALT 143 Å
17. ALT 144 É
18. ALT 145 æ
19. ALT 146 Æ
20. ALT 147 ô
21. ALT 148 ö
22. ALT 149 ò
23. ALT 150 û
24. ALT 151 ù
25. ALT 152 ÿ
26. ALT 153 Ö
27. ALT 154 Ü
28. ALT 155 ¢
29. ALT 156 £
30. ALT 157 ¥
31. ALT 158 ₧
32. ALT 159 ƒ
33. ALT 160 á
34. ALT 161 í
35. ALT 162 ó
36. ALT 163 ú
37. ALT 164 ñ
38. ALT 165 Ñ
39. ALT 166 ª
40. ALT 167 º
41. ALT 168 ¿ (upside-down question mark - Spanish)
42. ALT 173 ¡ (upside-down exclamation point - Spanish)
43. ALT 34 „ (Start quotation marks- German)
44. ALT 0128 € (Euro symbol)

Tips

• On some computers this trick does not work unless Num lock is on. If the symbol does not appear, press the Num lock button in the upper left hand side of the number pad.
• Other combinations may display punctuation, but since they have been assigned their own key, they have not been put up here.
• Make sure you release the Alt key after each 3-digit combination. You must press it again for the next combination if you have more than one in succession, e.g. the German word "Grüße" ("ü" is ALT 129 and "ß" is ALT 225, actually a Greek "beta", but similar enough to the German "ess-zet").
• Note that this only works with programs which accept an ASCII input, such as email, NotePad, WordPad, but not MS Word, try it for the program you are using
• ALT 97-122 have the lower-case letters of the alphabet and ALT 65-90 have the capitalized letters of the alphabet
• The numbers beyond 170 can also have meaning, such as special characters and the Greek alphabet. Try to get hold of a complete ASCII table with an extended character set.
• You can also go to control panel > Character map

Warnings

• Do not attempt to write entirely with ALT combinations as it can be extremely tiring and it is much simpler to type on the QWERTY board.