How to get letters with accent marks in Microsoft Excel

For users who do not have specialized keyboards, letters with accent marks must be inserted or entered in Microsoft Excel using one of the methods listed below.

Inserting accented letters with the menu bar or Ribbon

The steps in this section only work with certain versions of Excel. If you cannot insert accent marks with these steps, see the section on Alt codes.

1. Open Microsoft Excel.
2. Click the Insert tab in the Ribbon or click Insert in the menu bar.
3. On the Insert tab or the Insert drop-down, select the Symbol option.
4. Select the desired accented character or symbol from the list of symbols. Scroll through the entire list or select from the Subset drop-down list to view a specific type of symbol.

5. After selecting the desired accented letter or symbol, click the Insert button.

Using Alt Codes

Newer versions of Excel no longer support inserting accent marks through the menus, the most universal method is to use Alt codes.

1. Open Microsoft Excel.
2. Double-click the cell where you want to insert a character with an accent mark.
3. Press either Alt key, type the appropriate number sequence (shown in the table below) on the numeric keypad, and release Alt. For example, to get an accented "a" with an acute accent, you'd press Alt+0225.

Table of common Alt codes for accented letters

Using a third-party program

For third-party software capable of inserting accented characters, see: How to insert accent marks and special characters.