The Character Map is a Microsoft Windows utility that allows you to see all available characters and Unicode in each of the fonts installed on the computer. Pictured is an example of what the Character Map or charmap looks like in Microsoft Windows.
How to open the Windows Character Map or charmap
Windows 7, 8, and 10 users
Click Start, open Windows Accessories, and choose Character Map. Or, press the Windows key, type charmap, and press Enter.
Windows XP and earlier users
- Character maps Character maps are programs with on-screen layout of symbols. You can use them to type all possible text symbols, and useful special characters, like letters foreign languages, or maths signs. For example, on the image to your right you can see what Mac's Character Palette looks like.
- The chart below may be used to type extended ASCII characters on the Mac from the keyboard. In addition, extended characters on the Mac are usually different than Windows because Windows used the ISO Latin-1 Character Set and the Mac uses the Roman character set.
Click Start, Run, and type charmap and press Enter.
Apple provides a Character Viewer (formerly the Character Palette) utility which allows users to look up and insert individual characters. Once it is installed, users can enter symbols for math, East Asian languages and other scripts. Note: The utility may not work with applications or sites that do.
What font should I use in Character Map?
The font all depends on what type of character symbol you are trying to find. For non-english characters almost any font should work. For other more specialized character symbols like an arrow, checkmark, book, operating system, hands, etc. we suggest using the Wingdings font.
Free Character Map For Mac
Example of inserting a checkmark into Microsoft Word
- Open Microsoft Word and Charmap.
- In the Character Map window, select Wingdings as the font.
- Scroll down until you see the checkmark (Character code: 0x6FC).
- Click the checkmark and then click the Select button.
- Once the checkmark is entered into the characters to copy text box, click the Copy button.
- Switch back to Microsoft Word and then paste the checkbox into the document.
Related pages
Character, Font, Special characters, Typography terms, Unicode
Type emoji and other symbols
- Click the place in your document or message where you want the character to appear.
- Press Control–Command–Space bar. The Character Viewer pop-up window appears:
- Use the search field at the top of the window, click a category at the bottom of the window, or click in the upper-right corner to expand the window and reveal more characters.
- When you find the character that you want, click or double-click it to insert it in to your text.
In the Messages and Mail apps, you can also see the Character Viewer popup when you click .
Type accented characters
Press and hold a key until its alternate characters appear, then click or type the number under the character that you want to use.
If no additional characters are available for the key that you're holding, the accent menu doesn't appear.
If you decide that you don't want to type an accented character after holding a key, press the Esc (escape) key.
Repeat a character
Some keys repeat when you press and hold them, depending on where you type them. Press and hold the Space bar or symbol keys (like hyphen or equals) to make these characters repeat in most apps. In apps where accented characters aren't used (like Calculator, Grapher, or Terminal), letter and number keys also repeat when you press and hold them.
If a character isn't repeating, check your Key Repeat settings:
- Choose Apple () menu > System Preferences.
- Click Keyboard.
- Make sure that the Key Repeat slider isn't set to Off.
If a key isn't designed to repeat in the app you’re using, follow these steps:
- Select the character that you want to copy.
- Press Command-C to copy the character to the clipboard.
- Hold Command-V to paste the character repeatedly.