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Useful Shortcut For You...


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Just a by the by really.

 

Don't know how many of you know that there are a number of easy shortcuts built into Windows... These enable you to put in symbols like °, µ, ™, etc quickly and easily.

 

The one that concerns us is obviously the degrees symbol.

 

To add this to any text box, regardless of font, simply type, on your numeric keypad, the following code: ALT+0176

 

There are loads of these, for most commonly used symbols (I use µ, ALT+0181, on a daily basis - easier than having to choose "insert symbol" every time). To find one that could help you, open up Character Map (usually in Start>Programs>Accessories>System Tools), locate the character you want, and if it has a shortcut associated with it, this will be listed in the bottom right of the window.

 

Simple!

 

Hope this helps someone out there!

 

Aidan

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If you have trouble remembering all the ALT codes, try AllChars, from http://allchars.zwolnet.com/. It lets you "build up" characters from their "components", or from relatively simple mnemonics.

 

Eg, for é you hit Ctrl, then e and '. For a German ß you hit Ctrl and then s twice (logical). For º it's Ctrl, then . and o - sort of logical and not too hard to remember.

 

AllChars works in almost every Windows application ("The Sims" is the only one I've found where it gets in the way).

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The one that concerns us is obviously the degrees symbol.

 

To add this to any text box, regardless of font, simply type, on your numeric keypad, the following code: ALT+0176

Looks like I've been using the wrong character for "degrees" for a long time.

 

I type ALT+167, which gives one of these º

 

.. but according to Character Map that's actually the "Masculine Ordinal Indicator."

 

Hmmm. On reflection, that's so cool I'm going to keep on using it... B)

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Unfortunately my Laptop doesn't have a numeric keypad [..]

'course it does - just press the function (Fn) key, and m, j, k, l, u, i, o, 7, 8, or 9. :D

Whaddya mean, you haven't got a function key..? :(

OK - So I'm pressing [ALT][FN] and mj7o (0176) and all I get is "bong""bong""bong""bong" :D

 

No degree sign, no nuttin' :D

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AllChars (see my previous post) lets you do more or less that...

°°° Success °°°

 

Just what I wanted - thanks :ph34r:

Be careful of the macros - there are three pre-defined macros which can be weird if you don't know about them. Specifically, if you want to type "I am red/green colourblind", you will see that "/gr" gets turned into "Greetings, Bill". You can of course remove this demo macro, or change the macro timeout so you have to type the characters within 100ms.

 

Other than that, and the fact that it messes up the keyboard in "The Sims 2", AllChars is work of utter genius. At my office we work in about 40 languages and it saves us thousands of Euros a year in lost time looking up Alt-nnnn codes.

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