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.
While 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 Shift6)
| 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 CtrlShift6 (where ^ lives) then let go of the keyboard and press ShiftA (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
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