Accents on letters in word

An Accent is a diacritical mark used to indicate stress or placed below or above a letter (or a vowel) to indicate a special pronunciation.

Due to improved keyboard controls on devices, typing or putting accents on letters (accented letters) becomes very easy. Whether you are using a desktop (be it Windows or Mac), laptop, or even on mobile devices, you can easily type accents on letters with some cool tricks and techniques you’ll learn about in this article.

There are some specialized keyboards that allow you to type these accented letters easily. Thus, if you don’t use these special Accent keyboards, you’ll need some of the techniques in this article to be able to type any letter with an accent or symbol into your Work on any device.

Without further ado, let’s get started.

There are several approaches to typing or inserting accented letters into Microsoft Windows.

Since these characters are not readily available on the keyboard, using their alt codes is the simplest way to type them on Windows.

In this section, I’ll show you how to type accents in windows using the characters’ alt codes.

Using the Letters with Accents Alt Code

Each letter with an accent has an alt code with which you can use to type it anywhere in Windows, whether in Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, in your Browser, and so on. You’ll learn the alt code to all the accented characters in a moment. For now, let’s look at the steps.

To type letters with accents on top, obey the following instruction:

• First of all, know the alt code of the letter with accent you want to type. The alt codes are listed just below these instructions.
• Turn on your Num Lock. Press Fn+NmLk to turn on Num Lock on laptops without the numeric keypad.
• Hold down the Alt key on your keyboard.
• Whilst still holding on to the Alt key, press the character’s alt code.
• For example, to type e with an acute accent (é), press and hold the Alt key, then type the alt code 0233 on the numeric keypad.
• Now release the Alt key.

You should see the accented letter inserted as soon as you release the Alt key.

Below are the alt codes for the various accented letters.

Letters with Acute accents Alt Codes

Description	Symbol	Alt Codes
A acute – Uppercase	Á	Alt 0193
a acute – Lowercase	á	Alt 0225
E acute – Uppercase	É	Alt 0201
e acute – Lowercase	é	Alt 0233
I acute – Uppercase	Í	Alt 0205
i acute – Lowercase	í	Alt 0237
O acute – Uppercase	Ó	Alt 0211
o acute – Lowercase	ó	Alt 0243
U acute – Uppercase	Ú	Alt 0218
u acute – Lowercase	ú	Alt 0250
Y acute – Uppercase	Ý	Alt 0221
y acute – Lowercase	ý	Alt 0253

Letters with Grave accents Alt Codes

Description	Symbol	Alt Codes
A grave – Uppercase	À	Alt 0192
a grave – Lowercase	à	Alt 0224
E grave – Uppercase	È	Alt 0200
e grave – Lowercase	è	Alt 0232
I grave – Uppercase	Ì	Alt 0204
i grave – Lowercase	ì	Alt 0236
O grave – Uppercase	Ò	Alt 0210
o grave – Lowercase	ò	Alt 0242
U grave – Uppercase	Ù	Alt 0217
u grave – Lowercase	ù	Alt 0249

Letters with Circumflex accents Alt Codes

Description	Symbol	Alt Codes
A circumflex – Uppercase	Â	Alt 0194
a circumflex – Lowercase	â	Alt 0226
E circumflex – Uppercase	Ê	Alt 0202
e circumflex – Lowercase	ê	Alt 0234
I circumflex – Uppercase	Î	Alt 0206
i circumflex – Lowercase	î	Alt 0238
O circumflex – Uppercase	Ô	Alt 0212
o circumflex – Lowercase	ô	Alt 0244
U circumflex – Uppercase	Û	Alt 0219
u circumflex – Lowercase	û	Alt 0251

Letters with Tilde accents Alt Codes

Description	Symbol	Alt Codes
A tilde – Uppercase	Ã	Alt 0195
a tilde – Lowercase	ã	Alt 0227
N tilde – Uppercase	Ñ	Alt 165
n tilde – Lowercase	ñ	Alt 164
O tilde – Uppercase	Õ	Alt 0213
o tilde – Lowercase	õ	Alt 0245

Letters with Umlaut Accents Alt Codes

Description	Symbol	Alt Codes
A umlaut – Uppercase	Ä	Alt 0196
a umlaut – Lowercase	ä	Alt 0228
E umlaut – Uppercase	Ë	Alt 0203
e umlaut – Lowercase	ë	Alt 0235
I umlaut – Uppercase	Ï	Alt 0207
i umlaut – Lowercase	ï	Alt 0239
O umlaut – Uppercase	Ö	Alt 0214
o umlaut – Lowercase	ö	Alt 0246
U umlaut – Uppercase	Ü	Alt 0220
u umlaut – Lowercase	ü	Alt 0252
Y umlaut – Uppercase	Ÿ	Alt 0159
y umlaut – Lowercase	ÿ	Alt 0255

Note: Using the alt code approach means that you have a lot to learn. And as we all know, learning these alt codes will take a lot of practice as there are many alt codes to remember. However, you can create a cheat sheet for quick reference if you happen to type accents frequently. If you are using any of the Microsoft Office Apps like Word or Excel, you can reconfigure some hotkeys to better suit your typing needs – We’ll discuss that later in this article.

How to type Accents on Mac

Typing accents on Mac is a lot easier with shortcuts. There are some combinations of keys for typing any accented letter on Mac. Let’s take a look at how to use each of these shortcuts.

Typing Letters with grave accents on Mac

Obey the following steps to type any letter with the grave accent mark on top of it:

• First of all, press [Option]+[`] on your keyboard.

• Then press the letter to be accented.

For example, to type è (e with the grave accent), press and hold [OPTION], then press the [`] grave accent key. Release the two keys and then type [e]. The ‘e’ with grave should be inserted into your work. The same technique can be used to type à, ì, ò and ù.

The [`] mark is called the grave accent and the key for typing this mark is the key on top of the [Tab] key and before the [1] key.

Letters with grave accent shortcuts are listed in the table below:

Symbol	Description	Shortcut on Mac
à	a grave	[OPTION]+[`] then a
è	e grave	[OPTION]+[`] then e
ì	i grave	[OPTION]+[`] then i
ò	o grave	[OPTION]+[`] then o
ù	u grave	[OPTION]+[`] then u

Typing Letters with acute accents on Mac

Obey the following steps to type any letter with the acute accent mark on top of it:

• First of all, press [Option]+[e] on your keyboard.
• Then press the letter to be accented.

For example, to type é (e with the acute accent), press and hold OPTION, then press the e key. Release the two keys and then type e. The letter é should be inserted for you. The same technique can be used to type á, í, í, ó, ú and ý.

Letters with acute accent shortcuts are listed in the table below:

Symbol	Description	Shortcut on Mac
á	a acute	[OPTION]+[e] then a
é	e acute	[OPTION]+[e] then e
í	i acute	[OPTION]+[e]  then i
ó	o acute	[OPTION]+[e] then o
ú	u acute	[OPTION]+[e] then u
ý	y acute	[OPTION]+[e] then y

Typing Letters with circumflex accents on Mac

Obey the following steps to type any letter with the circumflex accent mark on top of it:

• First of all, press [Option]+[i] on your keyboard.
• Then press the letter to be accented.

For example, to type ê (e with the circumflex accent), press and hold the [OPTION] key, then press the [i] key. Release the two keys and then type e. The letter ê should be inserted into your work. The same technique can be used to type â, î, ô and û.

Letters with circumflex accent shortcuts are listed in the table below:

Symbol	Description	Shortcut on Mac
â	a circumflex	[OPTION]+[i] then a
ê	e circumflex	[OPTION]+[i] then e
î	i circumflex	[OPTION]+[i] then i
ô	o circumflex	[OPTION]+[i] then o
û	u circumflex	[OPTION]+[i] then u

Typing Letters with the tilde accents on Mac

Obey the following steps to type any letter with the tilde accent mark on top of it:

• First of all, press [Option]+[n] on your keyboard.
• Then press the letter to be accented.

For example, to type ã (a with the tilde accent), press and hold the [OPTION] key, then press the [n] key. Release the two keys and then type a. The letter ã should be inserted into your work. The same technique can be used to type ñ and õ.

Letters with tilde accent shortcuts for Mac are listed in the table below:

Symbol	Description	Shortcut on Mac
ã	a tilde	[OPTION]+[n] then a
ñ	n tilde	[OPTION]+[n] then n
õ	o tilde	[OPTION]+[n] then o

Letters with umlaut accents on Mac

Obey the following steps to type any letter with the umlaut accent mark on top of it:

• First of all, press [Option]+[u] on your keyboard.
• Then press the letter to be accented.

For example, to type ë (e with the umlaut accent), press and hold the [OPTION] key, then press the [u] key. Release the two keys and then type e. The letter ë should be inserted into your work. The same technique can be used to type ä, ï, ö, ü and ÿ.

Letters with umlaut accent shortcuts are listed in the table below:

Symbol	Description	Shortcut on Mac
ä	a umlaut	[OPTION]+[u] then a
ë	e umlaut	[OPTION]+[u] then e
ï	i umlaut	[OPTION]+[u] then i
ö	o umlaut	[OPTION]+[u] then o
ü	u umlaut	[OPTION]+[u] then u
ÿ	y umlaut	[OPTION]+[u] then y

These are the easy ways to type letters with accents on top of them on Mac.

How to Type Accents on Letters in Word

In this section, we’ll discuss the various options you can use to type accents in Microsoft Word.

Without further ado, let’s get started.

Keyboard shortcuts for typing accents in Word

If you are using Microsoft Word for typing your projects which requires you to frequently type accented letters, you’ll be happy to learn that Word has made typing accents very easy with some combinations of keys.

For example, to type é ( e with acute accent) in Word, press Ctrl+’ (apostrophe), then hit on the letter [e].

This means that Ctrl+’ then [a] gives you á, Ctrl+’ then [u] gives you ú, and so on.

Below is a table of shortcut keys to type accents in Word:

Accented Letters	Shortcut Key in MS Word
à, è, ì, ò, ù, À, È, Ì, Ò, Ù	Ctrl+` (accent grave), the letter
á, é, í, ó, ú, ý, Á, É, Í, Ó, Ú, Ý	Ctrl+’ (apostrophe), the letter
â, ê, î, ô, û, Â, Ê, Î, Ô, Û	Ctrl+Shift+^ (caret), the letter
ã, ñ, õ, Ã, Ñ, Õ	Ctrl+Shift+~ (tilde), the letter
ä, ë, ï, ö, ü, ÿ, Ä, Ë, Ï, Ö, Ü, Ÿ	Ctrl+Shift+: (colon), the letter
å, Å	Ctrl+Shift+@ (At), a or A

Typing Letters with accents in Word using Alt Codes

One of the easiest ways you can get any accented letter in Word is to use the character’s alt code. All you have to do is to key in the alt code whilst you press and hold the Alt key on your keyboard.

Below are the steps to type any accented letter in Word using the character’s Alt code:

• First of all, identify the alt code of the accented letter you wish to type. In this example, we will type the letter e with an acute accent (é). The Alt code for this letter is 130.

Note: Refer to the first section of this article for a list of alt codes for all the accented letters.

• Press and hold the Alt key and type the alt code of the letter you wish to type. In this example, we are typing é whose alt code is 130. Therefore, whilst holding down the Alt key, press 130 on the numeric keypad at the right-hand side of your keyboard.

This is how you may type accents into Microsoft Word with the help of character codes.

Insert Accents using the Insert symbol’s dialog

This particular method involves a little bit of workaround. But it’s fairly simple. It doesn’t involve using the keyboard though.

And once you get the accented you want into your document; you can always copy and paste it again as and when the need arises.

Obey the following instructions to insert accents in Word using the insert symbol dialog.

• On the Insert tab, click the Symbol button and choose More Symbols…

These few clicks will display the Symbol dialog box. Now it’s time to look for the symbol you want to insert.

• Locate the Symbol

To easily find all the accents in the dialog box, look at the bottom right area of the Symbol dialog box and select Unicode (hex) in the from: drop-down. Then look again at the top right area of the dialog and select Latin-1 Supplement in the Subset: drop-down.

This will filter out all the letters with accents.

• Select the symbol, then click Insert. Alternatively, double-click on your choice to insert it into your document.

• After inserting, close the Symbol dialog box by clicking on the Cancel button.

This is how you may insert letters with accents in Word using the insert symbol dialog.

How to Type Accents in Excel

There are two simple ways to type accents in Excel. The use of character codes and using the insert symbol’s dialog box.

In this section, I’ll go through these two options one after the other.

Without further ado, let’s get started.

Using the insert Symbol’s dialog

The following steps will show you how to insert letters with accents in Excel using the insert symbol’s dialog box.

• Select the cell that will contain the accented letter you wish to insert. If you want the accented letter to come before or after a particular character in a cell, place the insertion pointer right there.
• Click on the Insert tab.

• Click on the Symbols drop down and select Symbol to display the Symbol’s dialog box.

• The Symbols dialog box will appear.
• From this Symbol dialog box, search for the letter with an accent you want and double click it to insert. Alternatively, just select and click on the Insert button at the bottom of the dialog.

• Click on the Cancel button to close the dialog.

This is how you may use the Symbol’s dialog box to insert letters with accents in Excel.

Using alt codes to type accents in Excel

Another easy way to type letters with accents in Excel is to use alt codes. This method will work for you if you are using a Windows PC. If it looks like you, just obey the instructions below:

• First of all, identify the alt code of the accented letter you wish to type. In this example, we will type the letter e with an acute accent (é). The Alt code for this letter is 130.

Note: Refer to the first section of this article for list of alt codes for all the accented letters.

• Now, Select the cell that will contain the letter with an accent.
• Press and hold the Alt key and type the alt code of the accented letter. In this example, we are typing é whose alt code is 130. Therefore, whilst holding down the Alt key, press 130 on the numeric keypad at the right-hand side of your keyboard.
• After typing the code, release the alt key.

This is how you may type accents in Microsoft Excel using alt codes.

Open the «Insert» tab, then navigate to Symbol > More Symbols, and select the accented letter you want to insert. Alternatively, press Ctrl+(accent mark) or Ctrl+Shift+(accent mark) quickly followed by a letter to insert an accented character into a Word document.

If you don’t have a specialized keyboard, you have to do a little extra work to type letters with accent marks in Microsoft Word. Here are a few ways you can add accents using keyboard shortcuts and other on-screen tools.

If you type regularly in a language other than English, you probably have this all worked out already. Perhaps you even use a specialized keyboard that makes typing letters with accent marks easier. But if you’re typing primarily in English, there are still times you might need to type an accented letter. After all, English uses many words borrowed from other languages—like déjà vu, jalapeño, doppelgänger, and résumé, for example.

And while we generally just type those words without accents in English, sometimes it’s nice to take the more formal approach. In the cases where you do, Microsoft Word provides a few easy ways to make it happen.

Insert Accented Letters with Word’s Insert Function

If you only need to insert accented characters occasionally, it’s easy enough to pop open Microsoft Word’s Symbol window and hunt for the letter you need.

Switch over to the “Insert” tab, and then click the “Advanced Symbol” or “Symbol” button.

Newer versions of Word will automatically open the Symbol window. In older versions, the dropdown menu shows your most-recently-used symbols. If the symbol you’re after is there, just click it. If not, click the “More Symbols” option, instead.

The Symbol window that opens displays a huge number of characters to choose from—3,633 to be exact. Word does help by letting you filter by font and subset, though.

Use the “Font” dropdown menu to choose the font you’re using (or, you can just select the “Normal Text” entry). The “Subset” dropdown lets you jump to particular subsets of characters. In fact, if you scroll through the available characters, you can watch the Subset value change. For now, though, go ahead and choose “Latin-1 Supplement” from the “Subset” dropdown. That’s where you’ll likely find the accented letter you’re after.

Click the character you’re looking for, and then click the “Insert” button to insert it into your document. Note while you’re here that there are all kinds of other useful symbols in this window. Just in the image below, you can see the symbols for copyright (©) and registered trademark (®).

Pretty simple, right? But, what if you need to insert some symbols pretty often and don’t want to open up and search that Symbol window every time? Well, we have a couple of tricks to show you.

Insert Accented Letters with Keyboard Shortcuts

Microsoft Word has lots of great keyboard shortcuts, and shortcuts for accented characters are no exception. You may have noticed earlier back at the “More Symbols” screen that Word actually tells you what the shortcut key is for that character.

And the best part is that these shortcuts follow a kind of formula, so you don’t necessarily have to memorize them all. You’ll use the Ctrl or Shift key along with the accent key on your keyboard, followed by a quick press of the letter.

For example, to get the á character, you’d press Ctrl+’ (apostrophe), release those keys, and then quickly press the A key. Note that if you want Á instead of á, you’d have to enable caps lock before using the shortcut key, since using the Shift key would change the shortcut.

There are too many to list in this article, but here are a few shortcut keys provided by Office Support to get you started.

Symbol	Code
à, è, ì, ò, ù	Ctrl+` (Accent Grave), the letter
À, È, Ì, Ò, Ù
á, é, í, ó, ú	Ctrl+’ (Apostrophe), the letter
Á, É, Í, Ó, Ú
â, ê, î, ô, û	Ctrl+Shift+^ (Caret), the letter
Â, Ê, Î, Ô, Û
ã, ñ, õ	Ctrl+Shift+~ (Tilde), the letter
Ã, Ñ, Õ
ä, ë, ï, ö, ü	Ctrl+Shift+: (Colon), the letter
Ä, Ë, Ï, Ö, Ü

Insert Accented Characters with ASCII Codes

And what use would we be if we didn’t show you the geekiest way of all? If you’re going to be using a lot of accented characters—especially the same characters over and over—it might be worth your time to learn a few ASCII codes.

The American Standard Code for Information Interchange (ASCII), is an encoding system that provides a way to represent certain characters using the respective code. We won’t be going over the full list of ASCII codes, as there are hundreds of characters and it’s impossible to learn them all. Instead, we’ll go through the basics and give you a few short codes to quickly take care of those foreign words with diacritics.

To use this trick, you’ll need a number pad (either as part of your main keyboard or as an add-on). You’ll also need to make sure you’ve enabled NumLock by pressing the NumLock key at the top-left corner of your number pad. Most keyboards have an indicator light to let you know when NumLock is enabled.

To enter an ASCII code, all you have to do is hold down your Alt key while typing out a numeric code on your number pad. For example, the code for a lowercase letter “a” with a grave accent is 133. So, you’d hold down Alt, type 133, and then let go of the Alt key. As soon as you do, the character appears—voilà!

Obviously, it would be difficult to remember a ton of ASCII codes for different accented letters, but if you regularly use a few, it really simplifies the whole process. Here are a few to get you started:

Code	Symbol	Description
129	ü	letter u with umlaut
130	é	letter e with acute accent
131	â	letter a with circumflex accent
132	ä	letter a with umlaut
133	à	letter a with grave accent
134	å	letter a with a ring
136	ê	letter e with circumflex accent
137	ë	letter e with umlaut
138	è	letter e with grave accent
139	ï	letter i with umlaut
140	î	letter i with circumflex accent
141	ì	letter i with grave accent
142	Ä	letter A with umlaut
143	Å	letter A with a ring
144	É	letter E with acute accent
147	ô	letter o with circumflex accent
148	ö	letter o with umlaut
149	ò	letter o with grave accent
150	û	letter u with circumflex accent
151	ù	letter u with grave accent
152	ÿ	letter y with diaeresis
153	Ö	letter O with umlaut
154	Ü	letter U with umlaut
160	á	letter a with acute accent
161	í	letter i with acute accent
162	ó	letter o with acute accent
163	ú	letter u with acute accent
164	ñ	letter n with tilde

AutoCorrect Keyboard Characters to Special Characters

You can also use Word’s autocorrect feature to automatically insert accented characters when you type certain letter combinations. And, although this sounds like it would be the easiest method, it’s quirky and in practice, not as useful as it might sound.

Back at the Symbols window, select the character for which you want to set up an autocorrect function. Click the “AutoCorrect” button at the bottom left.

In the “Replace” box, type the characters that you want to trigger the autocorrect replacement. When you’re done, click the “Add” button, and then the “OK” button.

In this case, we’re telling Word that when we type the letter “a” followed by the accent grave (`) and then a space, Word should automatically replace that with an “a” that has the accent grave above it.

And now, for that quirkiness we promised you.

When you type a word, you have to type the accented character first. In other words, if you want to type “Voilà,” you’d first need to type a+’ then go back and type the “Viol” behind it. Otherwise, you’ll end up with Viola’—because Word won’t trigger the autocorrect when the trigger letters are part of a larger word. And, as you can imagine, this makes it really annoying if you have multiple accented characters in a single word.

And really, you’re still doing almost as much typing as you would using the built-in keyboard shortcuts Word provides.