Character Map is a utility included with

Microsoft Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for serv ...

operating systems An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware, software resources, and provides common services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems schedule tasks for efficient use of the system and may also inc ...

and is used to view the characters in any installed

font In metal typesetting, a font is a particular size, weight and style of a typeface. Each font is a matched set of type, with a piece (a "sort") for each glyph. A typeface consists of a range of such fonts that shared an overall design. In mod ...

, to check what keyboard input (

Alt code On personal computers with numeric keypads that use Microsoft operating systems, such as Windows, many characters that do not have a dedicated key combination on the keyboard may nevertheless be entered using the Alt code (the Alt numpad input me ...

) is used to enter those characters, and to copy characters to the

clipboard A clipboard is a thin, rigid board with a clip at the top for holding paper in place. A clipboard is typically used to support paper with one hand while writing on it with the other, especially when other writing surfaces are not available. Th ...

in lieu of typing them. Other operating systems have apps which do the same things that Character Map does; for example, Apple

MacOS macOS (; previously OS X and originally Mac OS X) is a Unix operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc. since 2001. It is the primary operating system for Apple's Mac computers. Within the market of desktop and lapt ...

''Character Viewer'' (formerly ''Character Palette'').

Overview

The tool is usually useful for entering ''

special characters As of Unicode version 15.0, there are 149,186 characters with code points, covering 161 modern and historical scripts, as well as multiple symbol sets. This article includes the 1062 characters in the Multilingual European Character Set 2 (MES ...

''. It can be opened via the

command-line interface A command-line interpreter or command-line processor uses a command-line interface (CLI) to receive commands from a user in the form of lines of text. This provides a means of setting parameters for the environment, invoking executables and pro ...

Run command The Run command on an operating system such as Microsoft Windows and Unix-like systems is used to directly open an application or document whose path is known. Overview The command functions more or less like a single-line command-line interface ...

dialog using the 'charmap' command. The ''Advanced view'' check box can be used to inspect the character sets in a font according to different

encodings In communications and information processing, code is a system of rules to convert information—such as a letter, word, sound, image, or gesture—into another form, sometimes shortened or secret, for communication through a communication c ...

(

code pages In computing, a code page is a character encoding and as such it is a specific association of a set of printable characters and control characters with unique numbers. Typically each number represents the binary value in a single byte. (In some co ...

), including

Unicode Unicode, formally The Unicode Standard,The formal version reference is is an information technology Technical standard, standard for the consistent character encoding, encoding, representation, and handling of Character (computing), text expre ...

code ranges, to locate particular characters by their Unicode

code point In character encoding terminology, a code point, codepoint or code position is a numerical value that maps to a specific character. Code points usually represent a single grapheme—usually a letter, digit, punctuation mark, or whitespace—but ...

and to search for characters by their Unicode name. For Unicode fonts, the characters can be grouped by their ''Unicode subrange''. Although the Unicode standard already extends character field to plane 16 and many codepoints of plane 1 are assigned with characters, this tool still only supports code points on plane 0 (between U+0000 and U+FFFF). Additionally, it does not display certain characters in that range for reasons unexplained. With all versions of Windows the utility can be started by entering charmap in the Start / Run dialog box. On

Windows 2000 Windows 2000 is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft and oriented towards businesses. It was the direct successor to Windows NT 4.0, and was Software release life cycle#Release to manufacturing (RTM), releas ...

Windows XP Windows XP is a major release of Microsoft's Windows NT operating system. It was released to manufacturing on August 24, 2001, and later to retail on October 25, 2001. It is a direct upgrade to its predecessors, Windows 2000 for high-end and ...

Windows Vista Windows Vista is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft. It was the direct successor to Windows XP, which was released five years before, at the time being the longest time span between successive releases of ...

, and

Windows 7 Windows 7 is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft. It was released to manufacturing on July 22, 2009, and became generally available on October 22, 2009. It is the successor to Windows Vista, released nearly ...

, the utility is in All Programs → Accessories → System Tools → Character Map in the

Start Menu The Start menu is a graphical user interface element used in Microsoft Windows since Windows 95 and in other operating systems. It provides a central launching point for computer programs and performing other tasks in the Windows shell. It is name ...

. On

Windows 10 Windows 10 is a major release of Microsoft's Windows NT operating system. It is the direct successor to Windows 8.1, which was released nearly two years earlier. It was released to manufacturing on July 15, 2015, and later to retail on J ...

, the utility is in the Windows Accessories folder in the

. Beginning with Windows Vista, the user can also type the name of the utility in the Start Menu search box/ Cortana. A secondary character map program is accessible in a text field on Windows 10 computers, using the keyboard shortcut , or the key in Windows 10's virtual touch keyboard, which is mainly used for the purposes of using

emoji An emoji ( ; plural emoji or emojis) is a pictogram, logogram, ideogram or smiley embedded in text and used in electronic messages and web pages. The primary function of emoji is to fill in emotional cues otherwise missing from typed conversat ...

, but also allows access to a smaller set of special characters. The

Windows NT Windows NT is a proprietary graphical operating system An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware, software resources, and provides common services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems sc ...

series of operating systems from Workstation and Server 4.0 build 1381 and the

Windows 9x Windows 9x is a generic term referring to a series of Microsoft Windows computer operating systems produced from 1995 to 2000, which were based on the Windows 95 kernel and its underlying foundation of MS-DOS, both of which were updated in subs ...

-series from

Windows 95 Windows 95 is a consumer-oriented operating system developed by Microsoft as part of its Windows 9x family of operating systems. The first operating system in the 9x family, it is the successor to Windows 3.1x, and was released to manufacturin ...

onwards also contain the character map, as do versions of

Windows CE Windows Embedded Compact, formerly Windows Embedded CE, Windows Powered and Windows CE, is an operating system subfamily developed by Microsoft as part of its Windows Embedded family of products. Unlike Windows Embedded Standard, which is base ...

using a GUI based on these systems' explorer.exe, introduced with Windows 95. Another version of the character map is found in the Progman.exe-based

Windows 3.11 Windows 3.1 is a major release of Microsoft Windows. It was released to manufacturing on April 6, 1992, as a successor to Windows 3.0. Like its predecessors, the Windows 3.1 series ran as a shell on top of MS-DOS. Codenamed Janus, Windows 3 ...

and

Windows NT 3.51 Windows NT 3.51 is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft and oriented towards businesses. It is the third version of Windows NT and was released on May 30, 1995, eight months following the release of Windows NT ...

Other operating systems

Other operating systems such as some

Unix Unix (; trademarked as UNIX) is a family of multitasking, multiuser computer operating systems that derive from the original AT&T Unix, whose development started in 1969 at the Bell Labs research center by Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, and ot ...

Linux Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, which ...

variants with

GUI The GUI ( "UI" by itself is still usually pronounced . or ), graphical user interface, is a form of user interface that allows users to interact with electronic devices through graphical icons and audio indicator such as primary notation, inste ...

s, the

HP-48 The HP 48 is a series of graphing calculators designed and produced by Hewlett-Packard from 1990 until 2003. The series includes the HP 48S, HP 48SX, HP 48G, HP 48GX, and HP 48G+, the G models being expanded and im ...

series

graphing calculators A graphing calculator (also graphics calculator or graphic display calculator) is a handheld computer that is capable of plotting graphs, solving simultaneous equations, and performing other tasks with variables. Most popular graphing calculat ...

and others also have a similar accessory. The

OS/2 OS/2 (Operating System/2) is a series of computer operating systems, initially created by Microsoft and IBM under the leadership of IBM software designer Ed Iacobucci. As a result of a feud between the two companies over how to position OS/2 ...

analogue of the character map called the ''Characters Map'' is available from third parties for systems from OS/2 Warp 3 onwards to current

ArcaOS ArcaOS is an operating system based on OS/2, developed and marketed by Arca Noae, LLC under license from IBM. It was codenamed Blue Lion during its development. It builds on OS/2 Warp 4.52 by adding support for new hardware, fixing defects and l ...

versions. The

version is known as the "Character Viewer". A

GNUstep GNUstep is a free software implementation of the Cocoa (formerly OpenStep) Objective-C frameworks, widget toolkit, and application development tools for Unix-like operating systems and Microsoft Windows. It is part of the GNU Project. GNUstep ...

character map application, "Charmap", is developed by

GNU Savannah GNU Savannah is a project of the Free Software Foundation initiated by Loïc Dachary, which serves as a collaborative software development management system for free Software projects. Savannah currently offers CVS, GNU arch, Subversion, Git, M ...

References

External links

Character Map Utility Windows XP and VistaUsing special characters (Character Map): frequently asked questions
{{Windows Components Windows components

Overview

Other operating systems

See also

References

External links