What do you do when you have to insert special characters that can't be found on your keyboard? You use Windows 7's Character Map. This application allows you to insert scientific notations, mathematical operators, currency symbols and characters from languages like Japanese Hiragana , Katakana, Korean Hanji and others. In this article I'll show you where Character Map can be found, different ways of searching for a character and how can you copy it to the application where you need to use it. Click on 'Read more' to see what Character Map can do for you.

Where to Find Character Map

There are two ways of finding Character Map. You can go to 'Start Menu -> All Programs -> Accessories -> System Tools -> Character Map'.

Also, you can type 'character' in the Start Menu search bar and select Character Map.

When opened, the Character Map application will look similar to the window below.

Find and Copy Characters Using the Basic View of Character Map

The characters are grouped by Fonts. Click on the fonts drop-down box to choose one.

Click on the characters to see a zoomed view of them.

When you select a character, in the bottom side of the application you can see the character's name and the keystroke.

The keystroke represents the combination of keys that you can press to insert the character in a document without copying the character from Character Map. If you use one symbol many times, using the keystroke can be extremely useful. All keystroke combinations are of form: the 'Alt' key and a 4-digits number.

To use a keystroke, make sure the 'Num lock' is on. Hold down the 'Alt' key and, in the numeric pad type the number code. When you release the 'Alt' key, the symbol appears in the document.

Note: The symbols can be inserted only by using the numeric pad.

You can copy a character without using the keyboard. To do this, click on the symbol and press the Select button or double-click the symbol. The character will appear in the 'Characters to copy' box. Click the Copy button and then paste it where you want.

You can also select multiple characters to copy. Choose the ones you want by double clicking on them with the mouse, one by one. You will see that all the symbols are added to the 'Characters to copy' field. When done selecting them all, click the Copy button.

Now you can paste them to any application.

Find and Copy Characters Using the Advanced View of Character Map

To open the additional controls, click the check-box for 'Advanced view'.

Each character set puts together different character encodings, specific to different languages or groups of languages, like Arabic, Baltic, Cyrillic, Greek, Japanese, Thai and others. Click the 'Character set' drop down box to see the options it has to offer.

Character Map allows you to group the symbols by different conditions. For example, Chinese, Japanese and Korean characters are grouped by the way they sound. Click on the 'Group by:' box to choose the grouping condition.

Click on different symbols from the 'Group By' window to see the corresponding symbols in Character map.

In the 'Group By' box, select 'Unicode subrange' to see more grouping criteria.

If you know the name of a character, or part of its name, type it in the Search box. For example, if I'm looking for a symbol that contains a dot, I can type dot and see all the characters that have the word dot as part of their name.

Conclusion

Character Map allows you find any symbol available in your fonts. You have different grouping criteria that narrows the search for a specific character, like font, character set, sound, category in Unicode range or name. Once you have found the desired symbol, Character Map offers you a simple way of copying the character so you can paste it in any document or file you need. If you have any questions about this tool, don't hesitate to leave a comment.

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