Many years ago I came across, by accident, a way of entering foreign accented characters into Microsoft Office applications by way of a standard non-accented UK/US keyboard.
Whilst this technique is documented in a few places very few people seem to have come across it.
Press Ctrl and a symbol followed by a letter and it will apply this symbol to the letter if it forms a valid accented character. Some symbols require you press Shift at the same time as Ctrl if you normally need to press Shift to get the symbol (e.g. ^ on via Shift-6)
| Symbol | Name | Diacritic | Examples |
|---|---|---|---|
| : | Colon | Umlaut | äëïöüÿÄËÏÖÜŸ |
| ^ | Caret | Circumflex | âêîôûÂÊÎÔÛ |
| ' | Single quote | Acute | áéíóúðýÁÉÍÓÚÝÐ |
| ` | Apostrophe | Grave | àèìòùÀÈÌÒÙ |
| , | Comma | Cedilla | çÇ |
| ~ | Tilde | Tilde | ã?õ?ñÃ?Õ?Ñ |
| " | Double quote | Double acute | ???? |
| @ | At | Ring | åÅ |
| / | Forward slash | øØ | |
| & | Ampersand | æœßÆŒ |
For example to get  you would type Ctrl-Shift-6 (where ^ lives) then let go of the keyboard and press Shift-A (for A). Voilà!
It sure beats trying to remember Alt-01nn numeric keypad codes or delving into the depths of Start > Programs > Accessories > System Tools > Character Map.
[)amien
This isn't limited to Office - if you install the 'International' version of your keyboard driver you get the exact same shortcuts in every application. The acute accent versions are available in even the basic keyboard driver like CTRL-ALT-e for example for é.
I've just tried the ctrl+modifier with Notepad using Lucida Unicode and the United States - International keymaps and the United Kingdom - Extended ones with no joy.
I know there are all sorts of codes mapped to ALT-GR (the same as CTRL-ALT) however they are a little limited and tricky to remember - e.g. ALT-GR p for ö and it doesn't even work in Firefox.
[)amien