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| Other names | charmap.exe |
|---|---|
| Developer(s) | Microsoft |
| Operating system | Windows NT 3.1 Windows NT 3.5 Windows NT 3.51 Windows NT 4.0 Windows 2000 Windows XP Windows Vista Windows 7 Windows 8 Windows 8.1 Windows 10 Windows 11 |
| Platform | IA-32,x86-64 andARM (and historicallyDEC Alpha,Itanium,MIPS, andPowerPC) |
| Type | Character map |
Character Map is a utility included withMicrosoft Windowsoperating systems and is used to view the characters in any installedfont, to check what keyboard input (Alt code) is used to enter those characters, and to copy characters to theclipboard in lieu of typing them.[1] Other operating systems have apps which do the same things that Character Map does; for example, AppleMacOS Character Viewer (formerly Character Palette).[2]
The tool is usually useful for enteringspecial characters.[1] It can be opened via thecommand-line interface orRun command dialog using the 'charmap' command.
The "Advanced view" check box can be used to inspect the character sets in a font according to differentencodings (code pages), includingUnicode code ranges, to locate particular characters by their Unicodecode point 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 onplane 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 enteringcharmap in the Start / Run dialog box.OnWindows 2000,Windows XP,Windows Vista, andWindows 7, the utility is in All Programs → Accessories → System Tools → Character Map in theStart Menu. OnWindows 10 andWindows 11, the utility is in the Windows Accessories/Windows tools folders in theStart Menu, respectively. Beginning with Windows Vista, the user can also type the name of the utility in the Start Menu search box.[3]
A secondary character map program is accessible in a text field on Windows 10 and Windows 11 computers, using the keyboard shortcut⊞ Win+., or the😀 key in Windows 10's virtual touch keyboard, which is mainly used for the purposes of usingemoji, but also allows access to a smaller set of special characters.
TheWindows NT series of operating systems from Workstation and Server 4.0 build 1381 and theWindows 9x-series fromWindows 95 onwards also contain the character map, as do versions ofWindows CE 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-basedWindows 3.11 andWindows NT 3.51.[4]
Other operating systems such as someUnix-Linux variants withGUIs, theHP-48 seriesgraphing calculators and others also have a similar accessory.
TheOS/2 analogue of the character map called Characters Map is available from third parties for systems fromOS/2 Warp 3 onwards to currentArcaOS versions.[5] TheMacOS version is included in the Font Book app, and is shown when viewing the "Repertoire" of a font. ALinuxGNUstep character map application, "Charmap", is developed byGNU Savannah.[6]
