Alt Codes for Accents: Full Chart and Spanish Alt Codes

How do you read the Alt code chart?

Each row is one character: the small letter, then its capital, which has a code of its own. The middle column is the code to learn, four digits with a zero in front. The last column is the short code, three digits and no zero. It says none where the older character set behind it lacks the letter.

The rows run from a to z by base letter, so á, à, â, ä, ã and å sit together under A. Letters of their own, such as æ and ß, close the chart. Click a letter to open its page, with every other way to type it.

Why do Alt+130 and Alt+0233 both type é?

Because Windows reads the digits from two different tables. Raymond Chen tells the story on Microsoft's The Old New Thing (opens in a new tab).

The IBM PC already let you hold Alt and type a byte value on the number pad. The character came from the PC's own set, which in the United States was code page 437. Windows kept those numbers for MS-DOS users and looked them up in what it named the OEM character set.

A zero in front sends Windows to the ANSI code page instead. On US Windows that is code page 1252, which Microsoft's list of code page identifiers (opens in a new tab) calls ANSI Latin 1. Every four-digit code in the chart comes from it. So the zero is not padding, and the same digits type another character without it:

Letter	Four-digit code	Same digits, no zero	Short code	Short code with a zero
é	Alt+0233 types é	Alt+233 types Θ	Alt+130 types é	Alt+0130 types ‚
ñ	Alt+0241 types ñ	Alt+241 types ±	Alt+164 types ñ	Alt+0164 types ¤
á	Alt+0225 types á	Alt+225 types ß	Alt+160 types á	Alt+0160 types U+00A0, a space

The short accent alt codes have a second catch: they belong to the PC, not to the letter. Chen ties code page 437 to the United States, and Microsoft's list names other OEM sets, such as 850 for Western European DOS. The Italian section shows a code printed for one of them.

The four-digit alt codes for accents do not move with the OEM set, so the chart puts them first.

What stops an Alt code from typing anything?

Most often, the keys you type it on. Microsoft's Windows keyboard tips (opens in a new tab) say the codes work only on the numeric keypad, never on the number row above the letters. Its Office help (opens in a new tab) adds that Num Lock must be on if your keyboard needs it for the pad to type digits.

A laptop is the harder case. Lenovo's user guide (opens in a new tab) says only some of its models have a dedicated pad, switched with Num Lock. Microsoft's two pages give no Fn route for a laptop without one, so this page prints none.

Without a pad, use the emoji panel or the United States-International layout from How to type accents on Windows. In Word, type a letter's code and press Alt+X, as How to type accents in Word shows.

The app can matter too. Chen notes that Windows takes a code above 255 modulo 256 by default, while some controls, such as RichEdit, read the whole number. So a long code from a website can type one thing in one program and another elsewhere. That is why the chart holds no code above 255.

Word's route has a limit of its own. Microsoft's Office help says some Office programs, PowerPoint and InfoPath among them, cannot turn a typed Unicode code into a character.