When you get your Chromebook really used as a work or study machine, then it is good to know how to bring out certain characters. Like, for example, the euro sign; in the Netherlands and the rest of Europe not entirely unimportant, of course. In this Chromebook euro sign guide I would like to explain how this and other special characters work.
Copy or hotkey
You can, of course, copy certain characters and characters from Google or another website, but that is a time-consuming process. It is more convenient when you know how to quickly conjure them up on you Chromebookso you can keep working – without interruptions.
Some apps or services, such as Microsoft Word, offer a digital keyboard that you can extract the characters from. But you don't always have access to that luxury, especially when you work exclusively in the cloud and also use the Chrome browser.
Before we can use special characters, it is important that we first check whether you have the correct keyboard. That can't hurt anyway, if you notice that typing somehow doesn't run so well.
Set keyboard language to Chromebook
Set your keyboard language to your Chromebook it goes like this.
- You can see the time at the bottom right. Click on that.
- Go to Settings and click Advanced, then Languages and input.
- At Languages and input, choose the option Input.
- Find the Input Method heading, and then click Add Input Method.
- Now select your language and press Add.
- Under the current keyboard you will see Enabled.
In this case, you would do well to choose a Dutch keyboard, so that you have access to an international keyboard layout. When you use the American version (abbreviated to US), certain key combinations may not work.
If for some reason you still have a US keyboard after setting the language, don't worry. Then press Ctrl + Shift + Space to switch keyboard layouts. You can switch back with Ctrl + space bar.
✔ Suitable for Chromebook
✅ ✔ Can also be used in browser
Chromebook euro sign and other special characters
Let's start with the example from the intro of this text. How do you get the euro sign out on your Chromebook? In this case, hold down AltGr + 5. Note, because AltGr stands for the right alt button on your keyboard. That is important to know, because you also have an alt button on the left.
Below we list the most important keyboard combination so that you can look it up and hopefully remember it. If you can't, no problem. Then save this article to your favorite web pages so that you can always lean on this reference when needed.
Among other things, we mention the term backtick. That's the grave accent. This is the dash on a letter that points from top left to bottom right. The other accent, aigu, has the dash on a letter pointing from bottom left to top right.
Overview of special characters
The overview of the most important special characters for you Chromebook.
- Backtick + e makes an è (grave)
- AltGr + e makes an é (aigu)
- Backtick + a makes an à
- AltGr + a makes an á
- AltGr + 5 makes a € (euro)
- AltGr + c makes a ç (cedilla)
- Right Shift + 6 makes an â (circonflex)
With the key combination Alt + Shift you switch the keyboard to EXTD. Then you can use the following characters.
- AltGr + q makes an ä
- AltGr + r makes a ë
- AltGr + j makes an ï
- AltGr + p makes an ö
- AltGr + y makes a ü
Then we have some Spanish characters for you to refer to. You may have to set the keyboard to Spanish first (otherwise it might be faster to copy the character from another text).
- AltGr + n makes a ñ
- Shift + AltGr + 1 makes a ¡
- AltGr + ? makes a
All special characters in a row
Is the character you are looking for not in the top row? No problem, we have included all (other) characters below. First we mention the key(s) you have to press first, you will find them in bold. Below that are the buttons that you can combine with them and what effect that combination has.
Alt key plus:
- 1 makes a ¹
- 2 makes a ²
- 3 makes a ³
- 4 makes a ¤
- 5 makes a €
- 6 makes a ⁶
- – makes a ¥
- = makes a ×
Shift-Alt plus:
- ~ makes a ñ or Ǹ
- ! makes a
- $ makes a £
- ^ makes a ¼
- & makes a ½
- * makes a ¾
- + makes a ÷
- q makes an ä
- w makes an å
- e makes an é
- r makes an ë
- t makes a þ
- y makes a ü
- i makes an í
- o makes an o
- p makes an ö
- [makes a "
- ] makes a "
- \ makes a ¬
- Q makes an Ä
- W makes an É
- R makes a Ë
- T makes a Þ
- Y makes a Ü
- You make a Ú
- I makes an Í
- O makes an Ó
- P makes an Ö
- { makes a "
- } makes a "
- | makes a ¦
- a makes an á
- s makes a ß`
- d makes a ð
- f makes an f
- g makes a g
- h makes an h
- j makes an ï
- k makes a œ
- l makes a ø
- ; makes a ¶
- A makes an Á
- S makes a ß
- D makes a Ð
- J makes an Ï
- K makes a Œ
- L makes a Ø
- : creates a ° (degree sign)
- z makes an æ
- x makes a œ
- c makes a ©
- v makes a ®
- n makes a ñ
- m makes a µ
- , makes a ç
- / makes a
- Z makes a Æ
- X makes a Œ
- C makes a ©
- V makes a ®
- N makes a Ñ
- < makes a Ç
- > creates characters like ǒ and Ǒ
If you're not sure which one to choose yet, check out our guide: The Best Chromebook buy.
Dear reader,
I've been a fan of it for 8 years now chromebooks and am now working on my second (hp)
Until now I always managed to avoid the use of special characters and wrote, for example, just Euro instead of the euro sign.
Now I found out that when inserting in documents you can insert special characters, I did that and it worked.
Now a day later I have a big problem. As soon as I put the mouse on a certain place in documents to insert something, the cursor moves to another place. Same with spreadsheets. I place the mouse in e.g. row c line 10 and the cursor moves to b7.
Any idea how I can fix this, I would be very grateful.
kind regards,
Gradus