How to Use Special Characters and Accents in Windows 10

There will always be cases where you need to use special characters and accents, but how do you do this in Windows 10?

While an individual piece of software may have a way to insert a special character, symbol, or accent, some do not support this. You could memorize complicated keyboard shortcuts to access these accents, or you could use the trick in this video.

Watch this video to learn how to use special characters and accents in Windows 10.

[jwdavis]

Thank you so much - this has saved me hours, when searching online in various languages!

[brandycoleman]

If I hold the buttons on my touch keyboard it just keeps typing the letter.

[matthewwhite]

yes but how can you do it without the virtual keyboard? if i'm typing i dont want to have to stop every time i want to put an accent in.

[sgartner]

Thank you for this great video! I had always been going to Word and using the control-shift method for generating Spanish characters (for example, control-shift-~ n) and then copy/pasting into other programs. In Word that's pretty straightforward, but sometimes I need it on a web page or in gMail, etc. The onscreen keyboard method is fantastic! I never found Word's method of generating accented keys too hard (I only speak English, Spanish, and Italian and all of the accented characters for those can be generated with <control-shift-accent> <letter> or <control-accent> <letter>).

[AbqRealDeals]

¡MUCHAS GRACIAS! I live in New Mexico and need to use Spanish symbols often in my correspondence. You make it so easy now!

[samuelsisk]

I am studying Spanish so this really helped me out, Thanks!

[JarvMonster]

The lack of this feature was among the main things holding me back from switch to Windows! Now that I see Windows has added a simple way to use special characters, I'm a little more at ease. I'm sick of Apple making so many of my apps and files obsolete. ¡Yay!

[WealthTracker]

Dude.... You are the FREAKIN MAN!!!! for this... I have French-speaking clients, & I really got tired of typing without accents when emailing them. Thanks a lot for this.

[Yuhon]

It is helpful for me when I take any Spanish or any foreign language courses.

[sarahglatz]

Thank You!! I have been using a Mac for some time and now have Window 10. This has been on my list as I type in both English and Spanish. Using ALT+#### was not a reasonable option as I'd have to memorize all the #'s for each vowel áéíóú and ñ Thanks for making it simple for me!

[wendtils]

This is the best alternative I've seen to typing the alt codes. On Mac, you hold the alt key and press any of the number or letter keys, is there not a similar method on Windows?

[jamesvaneaton]

Thank you for this! The technique my Spanish instructor recommended didn't work, so I'm grateful to have an alternative.

[Sonnereis]

Is there a way to change it in settings? So if you hold down a keyboard key the thing pops up? There was something like that at my school but they had Apple computers.

[kryscall]

super useful. thanks! i've been struggling with this, experimenting unsuccessfully for months. little did i know the key was to release instead of to tap. thanks!

[OnlineMD]

Awesome, it worked, though on my Win 10 PC, if I click on a character with the left mouse button, the special characters line up on one line. Thank you SO SO much! Oh, by the way, please speak up on your next video; I had to turn up the volume so much! :)

[SirBaron]

Thanks for this great tip I try to communicate with people in Spanish but did not know you could get all these charters fantastic now I will no longer get a red error under the incorrect characters

[mx-pippajones]

Thank you, this is just wonderful, I spent time setting up my Spanish short cuts, only to find they are gone after shutting word down. This works so far on my Word, Excel, and my gmail accounts, and I am sure everything else. In UK a very high accolade would be to give you a Queens Award, sorry I can't do that right now, as I'm still only a princess.

[ehimary]

Hi man, what if i want to have a combination of keys to print those special symbols? How can I do?

[vellympansa]

Thank you, this video is perfect. short and precise

[malachihoeft]

thank you so much it took me an hour to figure out how to get the § for the color text on minecraft. THANK YOU