Keyboard Shortcuts for Accent Letters in Windows

European languages like French, German and Spanish has special accented characters. Frankly, you can’t use standard English keyboard on your Windows based PC  to type these special letters. You can add additional keyboard input methods to type accented letters, which is an inconvenient way. Other option is to use third-party apps to make the task simple for you. The last and quick option is to use alt code shortcuts on standard keyboard without any additional app or input method. This should be pretty simple on all documents on Windows laptops and PC.

Letter Accents

Different languages use different types of accents like acute, circumflex, diaeresis (or umlaut), macron, tilde, cedilla and grave.

Keyboard Shortcuts for Accent Letters in Windows

Below is the complete list of alt code keyboard shortcuts for accented letters. Use the search box to type and filter the result.

Using Alt Codes for Accents in Windows

• Alt + Code – press and hold one of the alt keys and type the numbers using numeric keyboard.
• Alt + X – type the hex code and press and hold “alt + x” keys to toggle it to a letter. This method will work only on Microsoft Word documents.

Learn how to use alt code on your laptop and PC.

Using Character Map

Some of the alt code shortcuts may not work depending on the font you use on the document. Also the shortcut that works on Word document may not work on Excel. You have an alternative way to insert accented letters using Character Map app.

• Type character map in Windows search box and open the app.
• Choose the font you like to use and preview all the characters in the list.
• Select the character you want to insert.
• Click on “Copy” button and then paste the copied character anywhere on your document.

• Click on the “Advanced View” check box to view additional options.
• You can search by character set or unicode value to find the required character.

The problem with Character Map app is that you need to copy and paste the character each time. Check different ways to insert symbols in Windows to learn more about using Character Map and other options.