Comments on: Three ways to enter Unicode characters in Windows

By: Paul Kelly

Paul Kelly — Fri, 26 Apr 2013 15:47:45 +0000

Here’s a fourth:

Run the Character Map program, built into Windows. (If you are on Vista or later, type Character Map into the Start search box to get it, or whatever the equivalent of that is on windows 8).

By: Troy Tempest

Troy Tempest — Wed, 17 Apr 2013 15:44:16 +0000

Hi John, I’m having trouble trying to use the Runic alphabet via unicode. I can type all the German umlaut letters using unicode, for instance, alt + 129 gives me ü, but I can’t seem to do the Runic alphabet. It says the Unicode block for Runic alphabets is U+16A0–U+16FF. Does this mean I still hold down the alt key, then press U16A7 for example, or just UA16A7, or what? I have tried all the combinations I can think of, but can’t reproduce any runic letters. Thanks for any help you can offer mate!

By: Letters that fell out of the alphabet — The Endeavour

Letters that fell out of the alphabet — The Endeavour — Mon, 18 Feb 2013 04:41:37 +0000

[...] Unicode characters in Windows and [...]

By: Hariram

Hariram — Thu, 24 Jan 2013 07:57:29 +0000

Now a days most of the Laptops/Notebooks PCs coming newly in market, do not have any Numerical Keypad or NumLock facility.

So Entering the +sign from Nemerical Keypad is not possible,
nor it is possible to Enter Alt+Decimal Code of Unicode characters from Numerical Keypad, as No Numerical keypad is available.

So please provide a easy solution, so that just pressing the Alt or Fn key or Windows Key and pressing the Decimal or Hex value of Unicode characters will type the required character.

By: Tony

Tony — Sun, 23 Dec 2012 04:19:11 +0000

John,

The unicode input utility, you say it pops up when you click the ALT key. Well, some hot keys work using combinations of Alt+(some key)…and, in Photoshop, when you want to work with the Clone brush, you need to use the ALT key.

My question is, wont this Unicode utility pop up at the wrong times? If so, is there a way to suppress it when you use another program or want the ALT key for shortcuts?

Thanks for your help.

By: Steve

Steve — Tue, 15 May 2012 19:19:20 +0000

HKEY_CURRENT_USERControl PanelInput MethodEnableHexNumpad to 1

Putting the key in the root directory HKEY_CURRENT_USER did not work. The author should update the post for people coming here from Google.

By: Tom

Tom — Sat, 07 Apr 2012 12:57:14 +0000

@Fausto Unicode isn’t fully supported in the command prompt window, which displays text using “OEM code page”, different from the “ANSI code page” used to support the non-wide Windows system calls. Typically, the OEM code page is CP437 for U.S. systems and CP850 on Western European systems. For non-ASCII characters to display properly, your program needs to encode the text in this code page before being written to the console.

By: Fausto

Fausto — Mon, 26 Mar 2012 11:45:37 +0000

I wonder how to display Unicode characters on a Command Prompt window…

By: Insert Unicode characters via the keyboard?

Insert Unicode characters via the keyboard? — Sat, 18 Feb 2012 09:01:47 +0000

[...] According John D. Cook there are 3 ways: [...]

By: Draw a symbol, look it up — The Endeavour

Draw a symbol, look it up — The Endeavour — Sat, 12 Nov 2011 14:42:53 +0000

[...] Unicode is subtle The disappointing state of Unicode fonts Entering Unicode characters in Windows and Linux Inserting graphics in Twitter [...]

By: Dude

Dude — Wed, 07 Sep 2011 22:40:59 +0000

@DanD, just because it doesn’t have a built-in wizard doesn’t mean it’s not installing. Any exe that you run has full access to many places on your computer and can put files or read (more popular) from anywhere. Non-installing exe’s are the most popular spyware, not saying the unicode exe is but definitely don’t be naive about how the executables work.

By: DanD

DanD — Fri, 22 Jul 2011 20:17:27 +0000

For the UnicodeInput utility you say “Cons: Requires installing software.”
FALSE !

There’s no installing necessary, you just unpack the zip archive and run unicodeinput.exe

By: ₹ ₹ ₹ Using the new Indian Rupee Symbol (in Word, Excel etc.) | The Idea

₹ ₹ ₹ Using the new Indian Rupee Symbol (in Word, Excel etc.) | The Idea — Thu, 26 May 2011 09:46:07 +0000

[...] Also see: “Three Ways to enter Unicode characters in Windows” [...]

By: Mohammad Elsheimy

Mohammad Elsheimy — Mon, 03 Jan 2011 19:19:08 +0000

I think it’s a registry value of type String (REG_SZ) and it’s located in KEY_CURRENT_USERControl PanelInput MethodEnableHexNumpad.
Source- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unicode_input

By: countforall

countforall — Thu, 24 Jun 2010 10:54:05 +0000

use charactermap application in systemtools.why do u need third party applications…?

By: Four patterns in Windows keyboard shortcuts — The Endeavour

Four patterns in Windows keyboard shortcuts — The Endeavour — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 11:18:03 +0000

[...] Three ways to enter Unicode characters in Windows Readable path listings Integrating the clipboard and the command line ? X [...]

By: John Venier

John Venier — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 16:15:41 +0000

Interesting, thanks for the tip!

One funny side effect of one of the ways Windows handles Unicode is that if a plain text file which has only one line (no end-of-line) and has the pattern w{4} w{3} w{3} w{5} plus as many space-delimited five-character words as you like thereafter will be interpreted as Unicode, rendering gibberish.

Some clever soul noticed that “Bush hid the facts” matches this pattern and created a political conspiracy urban legend with it.