From ZDNet this morning...
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Entering special characters, including foreign currency symbols, fractions, and emoji, is a cumbersome task on most physical keyboards. Use this hidden Windows 10 option to open an on-screen keyboard that puts all those options at your fingertips.
 
Entering special characters in Windows can be inconvenient if those characters aren't supported directly by your desktop or laptop keyboard. In earlier versions of Windows, your only options are to memorize ANSI codes (which require a numeric keypad to enter) or to use an external utility.
 
With Windows 10, there's an easier option: Use the touch keyboard. Don't be fooled by that name. The touch keyboard responds just fine to mouse clicks. This keyboard appears automatically if you're using a touchscreen-equipped Windows 10 PC in Tablet PC mode. Here's how to make sure it's at the ready even if you're using a conventional PC without a touchscreen.
 
Right-click any empty space on the taskbar to open the taskbar customization menu and then click the Show touch keyboard button option.
 
That action immediately adds a new button just to the left of the clock on the right side of the taskbar. Click that button while working in any desktop program or Windows 10 app to slide up the on-screen keyboard. Here are a few things you can do:

• Click any letter or symbol to see variations of that letter, including those with accents and diacritical marks. On the symbols layout, for example, click and hold the 1/2 symbol to see eight additional fractions.
• Click the button labeled &123 to change from the standard QWERTY layout to one filled with symbols. Use the right and left arrows just above that button to display a second screen full of symbols, including symbols for the Euro and British Pound on a U.S. English configuration.
• Click the smiley face to display a keyboard layout filled with emojis and emoticons. Use the icons to the right to change to different groups of emojis, each of which has additional layouts available using the left and right arrow below Tab.

Click anywhere outside the keyboard or resume typing on your physical keyboard to hide the touch keyboard.
 
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This works great, and saves having to call up the Character Map app for those odd characters, and I can finally discard my cheat sheet with Alt+NumKey codes for German, Spanish and French accented and odd characters.
 

If you'd like the convenience of a hot key, you can create a desktop shortcut (executable is called OSK.EXE).
Handy for when you want to quickly type in some symbol that's not on your physical keyboard, such as € or £.

bitflipper
Handy for when you want to quickly type in some symbol that's not on your physical keyboard, such as € or £.

 
Us Canadians have got this great solution that unfortunately is falling by the wayside (if it's not already dead).  It's called the Canadian Multilingual Keyboard layout.  Supported by Windows and big companies in Canada like Dell, Toshiba, etc.  Four main levels [regular, shift, red arrow (right alt), green arrow(right ctl)] with just about every western character/accent and symbol.  Good for English, French, Spanish and many other European languages.  The accents are non-spacing so you can combine them with any regular character.  I live in two languages and this keyboard is more than fantastic.  Here's a look at my Dell laptop's lit keyboard (there are even more characters/symbols that don't appear on the keys and more than four levels since you can alt/shift and ctl/shift keys as well - the € is "right-ctl/shift 4") :
 

 
Seeing its demise, I bought a lifetime's worth of Dell multimedia pc keyboards with this layout.  Oddly, I got them off ebay from some company in Texas for 15$ each.  Toshiba replaced at no cost the keyboard on my daughter's laptop.
 
Long live standards.
 

You might be interested to note that file/folder names may have Unicode entries.
I use CHARMAP with the font set to Arial Unicode MS.
Then chose the Group by 'Unicode subrange'.
Then select something like 'Symbols and Dingbats'.
Then select something like:
♬
and rename a folder to that.
Then assign that folder to a toolbar.
 

"...the € is "right-ctl/shift 4"  An answer only a nerd could love.
 
Reminds me of a line from the old News Radio sitcom, where the house nerd explains that he's programmed the office phones with shortcuts. "Now, instead of dialing 911, it's star-347".

bitflipper
"...the € is "right-ctl/shift 4"  An answer only a nerd could love.

Alt+0128 (on the Num Pad) is automatic for me for '€'. Try doing that on a laptop keyboard. You'd have to shift the keyboard into Num Pad mode, enter the character, and then remember to shift it back to normal mode. It sucks. Been there. Don't miss it. I'd have killed for a keyboard like that when I had clients all over Europe and had to deal with 4 languages.
 

bitflipper
Reminds me of a line from the old News Radio sitcom, where the house nerd explains that he's programmed the office phones with shortcuts. "Now, instead of dialing 911, it's star-347".

bitflipper
"...the € is "right-ctl/shift 4"  An answer only a nerd could love.

After I first posted I told myself I should at least address the two examples you used (to show how easy it was), but then I couldn't find the "€".  I had to look it up !
 
It looks like the keyboard standard was intially introduced in 1992 and the € in 1995 (put in service 1999), so that might have something to do with it.
 
The real intent was bilingual English/French and for that most everything is on the two normal levels.