Adding accented characters into your Excel workbook is commonly achieved by using the Insert –> Symbol menu options to select the character you want, however while this is fine for inserting the odd symbol every now and again, if you have to enter lots of different symbols then things can become very tedious indeed.

Fortunately Microsoft have provided a fairly quick and easy method to enter the common accented characters by remembering a few shortcuts. It is possible to enter an accented character by one of two methods:

1. By holding down the ‘Alt’ and ‘Ctrl’ keys, and then pressing the letter on the keyboard you want accented.
2. By holding down the ‘Alt’ key and typing a number code on the numeric keypad.

Below is a table showing the most commonly used characters, just remember that when entering numbers you need to use the numeric keypad.