How to generate "£" or "½d" symbols etc on a keyboard

admin · **Posted:** Tue Oct 05, 2010 18:17:30 pm

Well I do not mind how it is acheived but we do NOT start threads here with "1/2 stamp" in headings when " ½d stamp" was meant.

reddies · **Posted:** Tue Oct 05, 2010 18:32:22 pm

davo wrote:

Glen. Regarding your comments on the topic heading "Printing on back of 1915 1/2 stamp" I am fully aware of the way to use the fn & alt keys to come up with symbols but for some unknown reason my computer will not generate symbols right now. Today was the first time I have tried to generate a symbol for about 4 months.

I have just come back from holidays and tried to insert a symbol for halfpenny (pre-decimal coinage) but the fn + alt + blue number did not work. I tried for several minutes and also tried using the digits + the alt key, no joy. Rather that spend to much time on just a symbol, I merely typed (1/2 - but getting a bit frustrated I unfortunately forgot the 'd'). I have seen 1/2d used many times as a cash amount.

I still cannot do it on my notebook, I'll call the service bods sometime this week or talk to my son in law, but it is not the most urgent thing I have on at the moment.

Davo,

With the Greatest of respect to you, if your PC has the Fn and scroll keys etc, it WILL work if you follow Admins' procedure found in Search. No one mucked it up as much as me when first trying everything out. You will find he was spot on. DON'T waste money on a service Bod. :idea:

admin · **Posted:** Tue Oct 05, 2010 18:56:03 pm

The only time it does not work for me I have forgotten to press the Num Lock key.

reddies · **Posted:** Tue Oct 05, 2010 19:57:48 pm

Davo,

So I don't confuse you, my Number Lock is written very small in Blue on the Scroll key. Sorry about that. :oops:

kiwidaytrader · **Posted:** Tue Oct 05, 2010 22:41:07 pm

This is brilliant. For years I have had to go to google, type in the symbol as a word, then cut and paste the choices of symbols it gave me.

Thanks for this wonderful thread of shortcuts I never knew existed.

Allanswood · **Posted:** Tue Oct 05, 2010 23:30:30 pm

Just a reminder for anyone who can't seem to key in the alt+combo numbers...
Find and put the "Character Map" on your screen as an Icon.

ALL the available characters are there just select / copy / paste, no actual typing or keying in of any code, no need to fiddle with num lock / blue keys / function keys /no need to google etc.

Å’ ÆŸ ÊŠ â…› â… ¼ ½ © â„µ ® ¥ ¢ â‚¬ £ â…“ â…”

From memory I moved mine from my "Control Panel" onto the desktop as an Icon.

reddies · **Posted:** Wed Oct 06, 2010 16:13:11 pm

kiwi daytrader wrote:

This is brilliant. For years I have had to go to google, type in the symbol as a word, then cut and paste the choices of symbols it gave me.

Thanks for this wonderful thread of shortcuts I never knew existed.

Kiwi Day Trader,

Just a little tip when turning ON your PC. Always go to the 'Re-cycle Bin' and empty deleted items. Benefit is slight load speed increase, and, files that are accidentally deleted they are easily put back without the UNWANTED. :idea:

norvic · **Posted:** Mon Oct 11, 2010 22:32:16 pm

reddies wrote:

Just a little tip when turning ON your PC. Always go to the 'Re-cycle Bin' and empty deleted items. Benefit is slight load speed increase, and, files that are accidentally deleted they are easily put back without the UNWANTED. :idea:

How do you easily put back an accidentally deleted file if you have emptied the recycle bin?

Allanswood · **Posted:** Mon Oct 11, 2010 23:00:34 pm

Hehehe, you don't without the right recovery software! And that isn't suppled with Windows either.

Reddies, how many hundreds of deleted files does it take to slow your system down? I've never had a slower system due to deleted files.

admin · **Posted:** Wed Nov 03, 2010 17:28:28 pm

A timely BUMP!

¢ Cent sign = ALT + 0162
£ British Pound = 0163
¬ Euro currency = 0128
¥ Japanese Yen = 0165

ALT + 0189 ½
0188 ¼
0190 ¾
0247 ·
0185 ¹
0178 ²
0179 ³
0176 °
0169 ©
0174 ®

norvic · **Posted:** Fri Nov 12, 2010 02:57:17 am

Time to bump again as we have had some more 2 1/2d stamps being shown

norvic · **Posted:** Tue Dec 21, 2010 00:35:00 am

Six weeks on, time for another bump to page 1.

Happy Christmas
âœ± âœ² âœ¶ âœ» âœ¼ âœ½ â… â„ â† âƒ â™¬

(all these can be found on most keyboard extras)

MargoZ · **Posted:** Sat Jan 08, 2011 08:51:49 am

Help!!
I have just been issued with a new iPad from work - having a lot of fun exploring it but so far haven't worked out how to do ½ or other common fractions.
Can anyone more mac-savvy assist?

Thanks
Margo

Jacob · **Posted:** Mon Jan 10, 2011 20:19:26 pm

Jacob here.

I have tried all these instructions for these 1/2 and pound symbol and they will not work.

I have tried turning num lock on / off and all these type things :twisted:

Can sombody help me :?:

norvic · **Posted:** Mon Jan 10, 2011 20:31:35 pm

Jacob wrote:

Jacob here.

I have tried all these instructions for these 1/2 and pound symbol and they will not work.

I have tried turning num lock on / off and all these type things :twisted:

Can sombody help me :?:

Jacob,
Tell us what sort of kit you are using - PC, laptop, Mac, macbook - and what op system and browser.

Jacob · **Posted:** Mon Jan 10, 2011 21:59:00 pm

Jacob here.

i am using a lap top with win vista . browser explorer

Hope this helps :mrgreen:

GlenStephens · **Posted:** Mon Jan 10, 2011 22:08:12 pm

ozstamps wrote:

It does vary for sure.

On a laptop I am using now I need to press:

Fn and ALT together and then for NUMBERS you need to use the blue numbers printed on the LETTER keys, not the numbers row up top.

I.e. Fn and ALT and then J, I, O

Glen

Jacob .. does this help -- or does the laptop have the 9 number keys to right hand side of keyboard?

Jacob · **Posted:** Tue Jan 11, 2011 17:53:11 pm

Jacob here.

Mr Glen it will not work :evil:

This is sending me nuts.

This is my lap top key board.

GlenStephens · **Posted:** Tue Jan 11, 2011 18:02:58 pm

Try this in order shown

1. Ensure NUM LOCK key is on

2. Hold down the 2 Fn and Alt keys together with left hand

3. Hit 156 at right with right hand while others still held down

4. You should get -

£

Jacob · **Posted:** Tue Jan 11, 2011 18:29:42 pm

£ £ £

Jacob here

Thanks Mr Stephens that works.

I am a bit sad at the moment with all the floods and my aunts place is flood out again and all the hurt Toowoomba people.

Jacob · **Posted:** Wed Jan 12, 2011 15:38:41 pm

Jacob here

Mr Glen with the 1/2 how do you do that one :?:

Thanks for helping me jacob. :mrgreen:

GlenStephens · **Posted:** Wed Jan 12, 2011 15:40:58 pm

Same process but use 171 not 156.

READ the thread Jacob .. this has all been typed out before many times!

½

Jacob · **Posted:** Wed Jan 12, 2011 15:42:50 pm

½
Thanks Mr Glen all done.

MikeC99 · **Posted:** Tue Mar 15, 2011 09:03:45 am

Thanks to everyone for the tips on creating these symbols. I just joined stampboards but before when I needed the ¢ or other monetary symbols I used the character map. You can learn something every day on this site.

norvic · **Posted:** Mon May 16, 2011 19:57:51 pm

Here we go again, time to bounce this up for newcomers.

norvic · **Posted:** Mon Jul 04, 2011 00:40:16 am

I think one of the mods should diarise bumping this - it's been 6 weeks, I didn't realise it had been so long!

Perhaps it should even be a sticky - but then we might get too many sticky threads.

mikeg · **Posted:** Mon Jul 04, 2011 00:57:10 am

I have never been able to get any of those 'alt' functions to work on my various IBM laptops that I use.

I just placed a shortcut to the character map on my screen- easy to access and I don't have to remember anything :lol:

norvic · **Posted:** Mon Jul 04, 2011 01:46:23 am

mikeg wrote:

I have never been able to get any of those 'alt' functions to work on my various IBM laptops that I use.

I just placed a shortcut to the character map on my screen- easy to access and I don't have to remember anything :lol:

I believe Microsoft Word (and certainly Mac systems) also have a menu option for "insert special character' which is the other place to find the 'funnies', and the mathematical symbols.

On Macs, also, pressing alt and most of the keyboard characters produces something useful:

1-0 produces ¡ â‚¬Â #Â ¢Â âˆžÂ §Â ¶Â -Â
and with shift: ÂªÂ ºÂ â„ â„¢ â€¹ â€º ï¬ ï¬‚ c ° ·
Q-P produces Å“Â âˆ‘Â ´Â ®Â â€ Â ¥Â Â¨ ^Â Ã¸Â Ï€
and with shift Å’ â€ž â€° Ã‚ ÃŠ Ã Ã‹ Ãˆ Ã˜ âˆ
A-L produces Ã¥Â ßÂ âˆ‚Â Æ’Â ©Â Ë™Â âˆ†Â ËšÂ Â¬ (yes, u/c Delta from K, Copyright symbol from G!),
Ã…Â ÃÂ ÃŽÂ ÃÂ ÃŒÂ Ã“Â Ã”Â ï£¿Â Ã’ in upper case
Z-M produces Î©Â â‰ˆÂ 'Â Â âˆ«Â ~Â ÂµÂ (v has no result),
Ã› Ã™Â Ã‡Â â—ŠÂ Ä±Â Ë†Â ËœÂ in upper case

ivqii · **Posted:** Mon Jul 04, 2011 02:00:15 am

I have created a Worddoc with the ones I most need i.e.

¼

½

¬

©

and then put a shortcut to the document on desktop

Only 5 to look for and a simple cut and paste operation - another way of skinning the same cat

norvic · **Posted:** Thu Aug 11, 2011 23:59:40 pm

A month has passed, so another bump for this

½ ¼ ¾ …›

tonyclayton · **Posted:** Fri Aug 12, 2011 03:19:06 am

I have always felt that the lack of ability to easily type special characters is a function that is very much lacking on a PC. When I operate using RISCOS, which is the operating system that the old Acorn machines used (and which I can now run using a program called Virtual Acorn), then typing those special characters was easy. Alt-c gave ¢, Alt-{ followed by a vowel gave an acute accent on the vowel, while Alt-} followed by a vowel gave a grave accent on the vowel. Particularly easy were Alt-4 ( ¼) Alt-5 ( ½) and Alt-6 ( ¾)

On my machine the codes some of you have given for these produce totally different symbols, so as you may have a different character set what you see might differ.

I still use RISCOS for a great deal of my work as it also has very powerful machine-code software that I find easier to use than Microsoft's Office Suite.

selvedge · **Posted:** Fri Aug 12, 2011 05:43:44 am

Jacob wrote:

Jacob here.

Mr Glen it will not work :evil:

This is sending me nuts.

This is my lap top key board.

Hey Jacob, Try this method for generating the special numbers and symbols.

Click start and open "All Programs"
Go to "Accessories" and open them.

Go to the "System Tools" menu and let that open.

You should see a menu called "Character Map". Right click on this program and select "create shortcut"

Now close all the menus and go to your desktop.

Double click the "Character Map" icon

When it opens you will see a massive selection of characters including $, $

tonyclayton · **Posted:** Fri Aug 12, 2011 07:26:23 am

selvedge wrote:

You should see a menu called "Character Map". Right click on this program and select "create shortcut"

Now close all the menus and go to your desktop.

Double click the "Character Map" icon

Even better is 'Pin to Start Menu' which gives you permanent access at any time

norvic · **Posted:** Fri Aug 12, 2011 07:33:25 am

And for those using Mac's Snow Leopard or Lion OS there is an icon at top right near the Airport icon which provides character viewer or keyboard viewer.

Jacob · **Posted:** Fri Oct 14, 2011 21:41:34 pm

selvedge wrote:

Jacob wrote:

Jacob here.

Mr Glen it will not work :evil:

This is sending me nuts.

This is my lap top key board.

Hey Jacob, Try this method for generating the special numbers and symbols.

Click start and open "All Programs"
Go to "Accessories" and open them.

Go to the "System Tools" menu and let that open.

You should see a menu called "Character Map". Right click on this program and select "create shortcut"

Now close all the menus and go to your desktop.

Double click the "Character Map" icon

When it opens you will see a massive selection of characters including $,

_________________
You catch more flies with honey than with vinegar.

KevinHedley · **Posted:** Wed Nov 23, 2011 13:55:23 pm

Mod's note - a technical glitch in November 2011 means that many of the headings and comments on this thread are no longer correct.

The result of the bug was the addition of characters like and Î in front of non-standard characters such as £, ½ and ©.

Please take care when reading posts on this thread.

norvic · **Posted:** Wed Nov 23, 2011 19:38:10 pm

norvic wrote:

I believe Microsoft Word (and certainly Mac systems) also have a menu option for "insert special character' which is the other place to find the 'funnies', and the mathematical symbols.

In view of the November 2011 Technical glitch which has effectively screwed up much of what is shown on this thread I'm going to try this again, but without much hope!

On Macs, also, pressing alt and most of the keyboard characters produces something useful:

1-0 produces ¡ € # ¢ ? § ¶ • ªº
and with shift: ? ™ ‹ › ? ? ‡ ° · ‚
Q-P produces œ ? ´ ® † ¥ ¨ ^ ø ?
and with shift Œ „ ‰ Ê Á Ë È Ø ?
A-L produces å ß ? ƒ © ? ? ? ¬ (yes, u/c Delta from K, Copyright symbol from G!),
Å Í Î Ï Ì Ó Ô ? Ò in upper case
Z-M produces ? ? ç?~µ (v has no result),
Û Ù Ç ? ? ˆ ˜ in upper case

selvedge · **Posted:** Fri Nov 25, 2011 00:18:52 am

So what is the glitch that is causing trouble?
?
?
? $ £ ¥ ¾

I have inserted all these characters as I have described previously without any problems, unless they raise their ugly heads later after the reply is inserted.

Some foriegn letters we may be familiar with:
? Bulgaria
? Greece
? Euro
? India
??? and a few shapes too.

norvic · **Posted:** Fri Nov 25, 2011 00:24:18 am

The spurious symbols appearing in earlier posts are much the same as happens if you copy & paste from MS products to some online forums. The accented A often appears instead of the pound £ sign.

That clearly can't be the same problem here, but it might be a formatting interpretation problem.

alyn · **Posted:** Fri Nov 25, 2011 02:15:38 am

Here are the Key Combinations for special Characters:

ALT + 0128 = €
ALT + 0162 = ¢
ALT + 0163 = £
ALT + 0165 = ¥

ALT + 0188 = ¼
ALT + 0189 = ½
ALT + 0190 = ¾

ALT + 0176 = °

For a complete listing you can check out this page http://www.ascii.cl/htmlcodes.htm

norvic · **Posted:** Fri Nov 25, 2011 02:30:27 am

alyn wrote:

Here are the Key Combinations for special Characters:

.... for certain computers.

alyn · **Posted:** Fri Nov 25, 2011 03:29:31 am

Good point Ian, I should have stated that these were the ASCII codes for predominantly Windows machines.

I wish that we could just enter the HTML code for symbols. It would make things much easier.

KevinHedley · **Posted:** Fri Nov 25, 2011 07:27:21 am

selvedge wrote:

So what is the glitch that is causing trouble?
?
?
? $

_________________
Here to learn
Here to enjoy

norvic · **Posted:** Fri Nov 25, 2011 07:33:32 am

Probably not much point in trying to translate the garbage, but better to start again.

The question for MODS and Admin is...

Are the first few pages of this thread now so meaningless as to render them confusing and harmful, and might it not be better to extract one or two key messages which are unaffected into a new similar thread, and delete the rest altogether??

KevinHedley · **Posted:** Fri Nov 25, 2011 07:42:59 am

I intend to raise that matter Ian.

However, our experts are still looking at what to do about the overall problem and I believe ther is an update due. I will wait until things settle down a little.

selvedge · **Posted:** Fri Nov 25, 2011 12:51:09 pm

It seems that the operating system for the board is no longer recognising ASCII codes.

Is ASCII.sys being loaded when the board is booted up?

KevinHedley · **Posted:** Fri Nov 25, 2011 16:23:13 pm

selvedge wrote:

It seems that the operating system for the board is no longer recognising ASCII codes.

Is ASCII.sys being loaded when the board is booted up?

You might care to ask on http://www.stampboards.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=32470

NZ Joey · **Posted:** Wed Dec 07, 2011 12:16:22 pm

Quote:

It does vary for sure.

On a laptop I am using now I need to press:

Fn and ALT together and then for NUMBERS you need to use the blue numbers printed on the LETTER keys, not the numbers row up top.

I.e. Fn and ALT and then J, I, O

Glen

Who said you can't teach an old dog new tricks? I tried Glen's suggestion above and it works. Now I just have to try the other numbers. One trick I learnt is when you delete something you didn't really want to delete,hold down - ctrl and push Z. It comes back but the recent deleted text.

GlenStephens · **Posted:** Fri Dec 09, 2011 18:26:44 pm

Just testing - sadly the first posts of this thread are a mess right now.

£, ½, , Ÿ, », “, ¼

£, ½, , Ÿ, », “, ¼

£, ½, , Ÿ, », “, ¼

GlenStephens wrote:

Just testing - sadly the first posts of this thread are a mess right now.

£, ½, , Ÿ, », “, ¼

£, ½, , Ÿ, », “, ¼

£, ½, , Ÿ, », “, ¼

norvic · **Posted:** Fri Dec 09, 2011 20:07:40 pm

NZ Joey wrote:

Who said you can't teach an old dog new tricks? I tried Glen's suggestion above and it works. Now I just have to try the other numbers. One trick I learnt is when you delete something you didn't really want to delete,hold down - ctrl and push Z. It comes back but the recent deleted text.

While on the subject of very old tricks:

Ctrl+C = copy
Ctrl=X = cut
Ctrl+V = paste
Ctrl+Z = undo
Ctrl+U = redo

Alt+tab = scroll through other open applications (or sometimes, windows within applications). On the PC I could use this to scroll through all open windows including multiple documents in Word. On the Mac it is only through Apps, but there's probably something I haven't found.

Now, after this public service announcement, back to the subject in hand - ½ ¼ ¾ ⅛


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How to generate "£" or "½d" symbols etc on a keyboard

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