In this Windows Tutorial, we will learn about some more useful features of Windows 7, which really comes in handy in our day to day tasks, and one of them is Character Map. You can access the Character Map through, Start, All Programs, Accessories, System Tools, and then Character Map.
Character Map is designed to use “Special Characters” in your documents. So what are Special Characters? A Special Character is a character that is not available on your keyboard. You can then use Character Map to insert and use those special characters. Character Map shows you a complete map of all the characters that are available for the selected fonts. Do remember that, different fonts have different set of characters. For instance, you will have completely a different set of characters for “Wingdings” fonts than the “Arial” font. Using “Character Map”, you can use copy individual characters, or a group of characters, and later place them into any program that can display them.
So how you will insert a special character into a document? To do this, first select an appropriate font that you wish to use. I would like to use “Arial”. Then character map will display all the available characters for that specific font. For instance, I have a document, where I would like to show the “Degree” symbol, for today’s temperature, and Arial font has that symbol available through Character Map. To use this special character, click on the Character, and then click Select, and then click Copy. If you have mistakenly selected a wrong character, then you can click inside “Character to Copy” box, and erase that character. You can also select a character by double clicking on it. Now, click on the Copy button. Now, open your document and move your cursor to the position where you want to have that special character to appear, and then click the Paste button. So, using the same method, you can insert different kind of special characters for your documents.
You can also select and insert a group of special characters using Character Map, and this can be really useful, if you want to have some words in your document, in a different language. For instance, I want to use an Asian Language word in my document, for which I already have a font installed on my system, called “Kundli”. I select this font from Font list, and you can see a different set of characters here. Now, I can double click on those characters to create a group of Special Characters, and later I can copy and paste them into my documents.
You can also use a Special Keystroke combination to insert a special character in your document. As you select a symbol in Character Map, in the bottom right corner, you will see the corresponding keystroke of that special character for specific font. For instance, for this Plus Minus sign in Arial font, the keystroke is ALT + 0177. Now, I have a document where I want to use this symbol many times, and then I don’t have to copy and paste this symbol through character map. Just select the Arial font in your document and press ALT + 0177 keystroke from your keyboard and that symbol will be inserted. So this way, you can memorize a few combinations for special characters that use the most. As an example, for “Wingdings” font, ALT + 092 is the keystroke to insert “OM” symbol.
So, using this simple tool, you can create attractive documents. Thanks for watching, and do subscribe to our channel for more upcoming tutorial videos on Windows 7.
Comments
Post a Comment