Drew's Tutorial - How To Find Those Special Characters

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Where is that darn *©®™#@&* Special Character?

Drew's Finding Special Character Tutorial

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It happens to all of us. We need or want to use just the right character or dingbat but we just don't know where it is or which key to hit to get it.

I have whole fonts of DAK characters, but the Capital D is the logo and small d is Drew. That's easy to remember, but which is Visa, Which is a scissors and more

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Plus I download fonts that contain bubbles for my diving, books for my free books site and oh so many characters for my wife to use.

Like most of us I used to hunt and peck till I found what I wanted. But since at least Windows 98, there's a much easier way to find what you want. It's called the Character Map and sure enough it's just a few clicks away from where you are reading right now.

A while back, I was working on a project that I wanted to include musical notes. I looked everywhere on the Internet and couldn't find what I wanted. Then, I looked in Arial, yes, just plain old Arial right on my own computer and they were there all the time. So, I'm a believer.

I hadn't thought about making a tutorial on this till I got a frantic call form a fellow DAKonian who was converting all her recipes from manual to computer for her grand children and she couldn't find the degree symbol. (Yes she did call me and ask.)

Then I got a similar eMail filled with frustration a few months later. My wife had asked me the same question when the boys got married last year, So, here's the tutorial so you'll see just how fast and easy it is to do.

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This Special Character Tutorial will be quick and short. So, let's get started.

Which character do you need? Is it the degree? A fraction? How about a musical note? an arrow? or well, who knows? It's all easy and just a click or two away. There are really at least two really good reasons to use the character map. 1) you often need a character that's not on the keyboard, and 2) when you use dingbats, they are never on the keyboard and they are really time consuming to find manually.

So, where is it? OK, here we go. Just look down at the bottom left of your computer at your 'Start' menu. Click it.

If you're using Windows XP, you'll go to "All Programs" With Win98, just Choose Programs.

Either Way, you'll navigate through your programs like I've shown you above. 1. First go to Accessories, then 2) go to System Tools and 3) finally go to Character Map and click it. That's it, it will open for you

OK, here we are. Wasn't that simple? Now we are looking at the Character Map for the font Arial. You'll find every font on your computer has its own Character Map. Just click on the Arial Name above to go to your other fonts.

Note: not all fonts have the same characters. AND THIS IS IMPORTANT. When you paste the character you've selected into your document, be sure that your document is using the same font you are selecting from in the Character Map. That's easy. Isn't it? But it's important. Because if you use a different font in the Character Map, you're likely to get boxes or errors instead of the characters you want.

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OK, back to the Characters. How do you get them from the Character Map to your documents? Easy. Double Click the Character you want like I'm doing with the Plus/Minus sign, or Click Select near the bottom right. If you look at my bottom arrow, you'll see the characters I've selected. Then just click the Copy Button at the right and then paste them into your document.

You do remember Control-C to copy and Control-V to paste from my other tutorial don't you? Onward.

Now it gets fun. ON SOME FONTS, NOT ALL, you'll find a scroll bar to the right. Do you see all these neat symbols? Yes they are there in your computer right now. Need an inverse bullet, a Male or Female sign or perhaps you'd like to make a deck of cards using the Spades, Clubs, diamonds or harts Symbols like we did for Iraq. Anyway these are much like Dingbats, but they are right on your computer right now and they are in some of your fonts like Arial or Times New Roman.

And as you look, you'll see Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Arabic and more. Even if you don't need the 'languages,' there are some neat letters you can use as dingbats too. And they are all so easy easy to use.

I love dingbats. I guess they are more interesting than bullets and I like to use them in my letters. Anyway, I have about 20 fonts of dingbats. It's impossible for me to remember which key generates which dingbat. Maybe your memory is better than mine. Anyway, here I'm showing you that I selected a ball with a 1 in it and it appears down below ready to paste in my document.

Oh, so you're still using Windows 98? Well here is the Character map from Windows 98. You can still get the symbols you need. But, I can't get all of them. Some of the extended characters just don't show up. But have no fear, we'll find them. But for most things you'll want, you'll find them in the Window's 98 Character Map just like in the XP map I've been showing you above

But where are the others? OK let's find them.

OK, open Microsoft Word. Then look at the Insert Menu (shown here) and click on Symbol. The Symbol 'map' will open.

OK, here we are looking at Arial. Guess what. It's the same as when we are looking at in Windows XP's Character Map. Just Click the Insert Button to put anything you want into your document. Check the Font Box (where you see Arial) for a few other Fonts. You'll find much of what you want in the font called 'Symbol' if you don't find what you want in Arial. Anyway it's all easy and you can do it all from now on really easily

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More. Look above to the left and you'll see I've inserted the musical notes into the actual Word Document. If you want to use this symbol smoother else, like in Outlook Express, just copy and paste it from here. We do remember how to copy and paste, don't we?!

So, here's my old Windows 98 Outlook Express using plain text. You can paste right into it and use many of your characters. To the left you can see I just pasted the notes from Word. The right arrow shows you what happened when I used a deferent font that Outlook didn't know.

Just because it's on my computer does not mean that every program has access to it or will recognize it. But as I said earlier, you must have the SAME FONT for it to work. And my Outlook Express is set to Times New Roman (Default) and so that's What I paste with. Also, only use standard fonts for eMail because even if it works on your computer, a custom font won't work on anyone else's that doesn't have your font.

I hope you've enjoyed this brief tutorial on finding and using the special characters. It's really frustrating to want them and not know where they are. Now you do.

A few last things that I want to mention.

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Here's one more tip. Whenever you want a new symbol, picture or special character, just do a search on the Internet for "Free Fonts" and the name of what you want.

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Maybe you want bubbles for a party, Chili peppers for a dinner party. Maybe a cake for a birthday. Or 10 types of fish for a retirement dinner.

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As you can see, there's really no limit to getting what you want. Your computer is great. The Internet is awesome. It's all in your hands.

Still have questions? Did I miss something (probably)? I'll add it if you write to me.

Enjoy. . . Drew

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