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I already tried changing Ease of Access settings and adding StringValue thing, but that didn't work. Some Alt symbols work. For example, Alt + 0255 creates ÿ but I need Alt + 0259, and that doesn't work. I tried one third-party Github app but that didn't work, so I'd like another solution if there is one?

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    wincompose.info might be worth looking into.
    – Hearth
    Sep 26, 2022 at 0:45
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    or Wikipedia and cut/paste. Maybe keep a "sampler" of those characters that are difficult.
    – mckenzm
    Sep 27, 2022 at 6:00

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ə (U+0259) is not Alt+0259 – first, because "Alt" codes use decimal values while the Unicode codepoint notation is in hexadecimal, so if "Alt" codes were referring to Unicode, then U+0259 would instead be Alt+0601.

Second, standard "Alt" codes do not necessarily correspond to Unicode codepoints at all – in many programs they correspond to positions in the single-byte Windows-1252 codepage (which was the standard codepage in old Windows versions before NT brought Unicode support).

(According to Wikipedia, the exact behavior depends on how the program or the input widget processes the received key events – some programs, e.g. WordPad, accept higher values while all other programs truncate the value to one byte and use the original behavior of interpreting it as a Windows-1252 code.)

For example, ™ (U+2122 in Unicode) is inserted by Alt+0153 because it has position 153 (0x99) in the 1252 codepage. Characters that aren't present in Windows-1252 (such as ə) have no Alt code in such programs.

However, it seems that recent Windows versions have a hidden "extended Alt code" option that you can enable to input Unicode codepoints in hexadecimal. Other posts say that you should be able to activate it using this Registry value:

reg add "HKCU\Control Panel\Input Method" /v EnableHexNumpad /t REG_SZ /d 1

After enabling this option (might require a reboot or at least a logout), Alt codes prefixed with a literal + character will be interpreted as a hexadecimal Unicode codepoint, i.e. holding Alt followed by +259 should input the U+0259 character.

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    altcodeunicode.com/how-to-use-alt-codes
    – Hannu
    Sep 25, 2022 at 15:23
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    FWIW EnableHexNumpad has existed since at least Windows XP, if not earlier. If you're running an older version of Windows, you likely have other things to worry about than Unicode keyboard inputs.
    – Bob
    Sep 26, 2022 at 4:29
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    HKCU is "Current User", which is loaded on login - no reboot needed. HKLM is for Local Machine, those are the settings which commonly require reboots.
    – MSalters
    Sep 26, 2022 at 9:54
  • It is not clear from this answer if Alt+0601 is supposed to work or not. Is it?
    – Andrew Savinykh
    Sep 27, 2022 at 6:01
  • @AndrewSavinykh: This is addressed by the third paragraph, which explains why Alt+0601 works, e.g., in WordPad, but not in Notepad (which I just confirmed by trying it on my Windows 10 PC).
    – Heinzi
    Sep 27, 2022 at 7:26
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In MS Office (not valid for Windows generally), type 0259 then type Alt+X
Full reference on the Microsoft support page Insert ASCII or Unicode Latin-based symbols and characters

In Windows generally, you can use the built-in Character map to select a character and copy it to your preferred application: Search for Character Map among your apps.

If you want to use the Alt+ code, see the answer by user1686.

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    Just want to add that the Alt+X feature in Microsoft Word has been present for at least a decade, probably closer to two decades, so it isn't a 365-specific feature.
    – Andreas Rejbrand
    Sep 26, 2022 at 20:30

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