I am new to notepad++ and like it very much, since I can customize how my text documents look more easily than with wordpad. However, I would like to know if it’s possible to enter accented characters like in wordpad (I thought it was a windows thing, but perhaps it isn’t). In wordpad, I can type, for instance, ctrl-’ then i to get an accented í character. Similarly, I can type ctrl-shift-~ then n to get the accented ñ character. It makes it much easier to enter accented characters than copying and pasting from the character map application, or trying to remember code points. When I tried this method in notepad++ I just got the plain character without the accents. I should also mention that when I open documents with such accented characters already present they appear just as expected. Is there a way to enter accented characters like this in notepad++ using only the keyboard? I am using the latest notepad++ under Windows 7.
4 Answers
In Notepad++ you can go to “Edit” then select “Character Panel” near the bottom of the drop down menu. It will show you the ASCII set available which includes most accented characters. You find the character you want and there will be a number for it, to easily use that, press and hold your ALT key, then, on your keypad on the right side of your keyboard type zero followed by the number for that character. So for something like “ñ” for example, the code for it is 241, so you would press ALT and then type 0241 on the keypad while holding down ALT and you will get the character you need. That works in most Windows programs, even in here.
This only works for ASCII characters in the range of 0 to 255. I don't know of a method other than copying and pasting from the “Character Map” app available in Windows for Unicode. Though I did test Wordpad with the Decimal number of the Hex value you see for a Unicode character above 255 and it will work with the ALT+#### in there, and probably other places, but it doesn't work in Notepad or Notepad++ for some strange reason, sadly. Two I use a lot and have memorized are ALT+0147 and ALT+0148 for the quotation marks “like these”, so once you use the numbers enough you tend to get used to them, or you can jot down the ones you use the most.
For anyone searching for a solution and coming across this page, try this (Windows): install and use the US International keyboard instead of the plain US keyboard. Search for "windows keyboard us international install" or something similar. I liked the techlanguage.com write-up on it and the teckangaroo.com step by step on how to install. Hope this helps someone in future looking around as I was earlier today for how to easily meet this need.
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