Computer Times
September 1999

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This month, we take a look at the Character Map, which is a standard Windows accessory. This is a very useful accessory that shows you all the characters of any font you have loaded in Windows and lets you copy those characters so that you can insert them into any Windows application.

Right now, you may be thinking, "Why can't I just type the characters into my documents?" You can if they are characters on your keyboard, but, what about special characters like these:

These are all extended characters that are included in the same font as this article - Times New Roman.

Virtually all fonts have extended and special characters that cannot be typed from a keyboard. So, the only practical way to easily see these characters is to use the Character Map.

You start the Character Map by double clicking on the Character Map icon in the Accessories window in earlier versions of Windows; or clicking Start, Programs, Accessories, Character Map (in Windows 95); or clicking Start, Programs, Accessories, System Tools, Character Map (in Windows 98). When Character Map begins, it displays a window showing all the standard characters, extended characters and special characters in the current Windows font. (See figure above.) You can select any of the Windows fonts you have loaded in your system. You may be surprised to see how many extended and special characters are included in each font.

To copy a character, you simply double click on it, which displays it in an area titled "Characters to Copy," and then click the Copy button in the Character Map window. This places the character(s) you selected on the Windows clipboard. You can then go to any Windows application and Edit/Paste the copied character(s) into a document. To view the small characters a little easier in Character Map, while pointing to the desired character, hold down your left mouse button. This will magnify the character for easier viewing.

A few of the Windows fonts have no standard characters at all. One such font is Wingdings. If you select the Wingdings font in your standard word processor, and start typing a message like "How are you?" what you will see instead is:

A few kids have told me they use the Wingdings font to encrypt their personal letters so their computer illiterate parents can't read them. They first create their letters in a standard font, like Times New Roman. When they are finished typing their letter, they highlight all text and change the font to Wingdings. This changes their letter from standard text to a series of symbols, as shown above. They then attach their word processing file to an e-mail and send it to a friend. If the computer illiterate parent looks at the file in a word processor, all they see are special symbols. To change the symbols back into readable text, the kid simply selects all the special characters on the page and chooses a readable font like Times New Roman.

Wingdings can also be used to create better looking documents. A few of the symbols included in Wingdings are:

These symbols, combined with a text message, can really transform your documents. For example:

Happy Computing J

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In addition to Wingdings, with all of its fun and useful symbols, there are also other special purpose fonts, like:

So, why not play around with Character Map and look at the fonts you have loaded in your computer. You may discover some fun and useful symbols you didn't even know you had.

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Till next month . . .

Happy Computing! J

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