Keyboard shortcuts for accent marks? (PowerPoint 2016)

The allchars application seems to work, but I'm curious to know 1) why PowerPoint doesn't include the same keyboard shortcuts that Word does, and even more 2) why Microsoft has problems incorporating accent marks with the keyboard in the first place. My MacBook, my iPod Touch, and my Android phone all make it easy to enter accented letters easily from the keyboard, without requiring that I install third-party applications and without relying on complicated menu options.

Parth's suggestions are good but don't answer your question exactly since they don't allow you to insert characters using only the keyboard.

Your keyboard may not have a number pad as such; most laptops don't.  But look at the JKL, UIO etc keys.  Do they have small numbers on them?  If so, it's what they call an "embedded number pad".  Usually you use some combination of NumLock and the Function key to enable it.  Once you've done that, you can use ALT + the embedded number keys to enter special characters.

Clumsy, but it works.

More work but way less clumsy:

Add the characters you need to PPT's Autocorrect settings.  For example, A with accent grave:

Use the insert symbol or the windows Character Map app to locate the correct character, copy and paste it into a text box in PPT.

Select and copy it.

Go to File | Options | Proofing

Click AutoCorrect Options then choose the AutoCorrect tab.

Under "Replace:" type Agrave

Under "With:" click in the text box then Ctrl+V to paste the previously copied A with accent grave character.

OK the dialog box and get back to PPT.

Now, when you type Agrave followed by a space character, AutoCorrect will replace it with the actual character. 

In this example, I'd do both Agrave and agrave, one for the uppercase A, the other for lowercase.

Or to make it easier to find all of your corrections in the list, you might want to use something like <<Agrave and <<agrave

Tedious to set up, simple to use later. 

Now does anybody know where PPT stores the autocorrect entries so you can back this baby up once it's created?

As volunteers, we can't fix things, just suggest solutions/workarounds for the way things are.

If typing the extra characters is a burden and you need to type in French routinely, and since you already know the Alt-key combinations, it sounds like a new keyboard that has a number pad might be the best bet.

Thanks for the feedback. I have actually been typing in French since the DOS days, so I know the ALT+ keypad numbers fairly well. However, neither of the keyboards I use the most often have the embedded number keypad. (Not to mention that it's a pain to have to switch the embedded keypad between letters and numbers.)

The autocorrect option would be very complicated to set up, I think. I know that in Word, though, AutoCorrect only kicks in at the end of a word, so I think this solution would mean that I would have to key a space after each AutoCorrect entry, in addition to typing all of the extra characters when I really only want one.

On all of my non-Windows devices, I can easily enter an accented letter in any application I wish, from plain text to a browser form to Word 2016. Given how global technology is these days, I'm surprised that Microsoft still hasn't made it easy in Windows.

Hello,

Welcome to Microsoft Community and thank you for posting your query.

I suggest you to refer to the below mentioned link on similar issue and check if it helps you in typing accent characters.

http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/office/forum/office\_2013\_release-powerpoint/accents-want-to-be-able-to-type-letters-with/c6e99978-2ab5-4f27-8ac2-eb135fdebb73/

You may also refer to following link for more information.

http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows\_7-desktop/easy-way-to-type-accents-without-having-to-use-the/14cb1aa0-5784-495b-9090-8f95acb9cdce

Hope the information helps. Do reply if you need further assistance, we will be happy to help you.

Thank you.