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How to type special characters like ☺♠♥♦♣→⌘⌥⎋⏏

Newsletter reader Bonnie submitted a question asking how to type a heart or happy face. As she suspected, there’s no need to limit yourself to the letters, numbers, symbols and punctuation you see on your keyboard. Hidden just under the surface of your Mac are thousands of special characters that you can use if you watch this video to learn how.

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So make someone ☺ today and send them an email with a bunch of ♥s!

{ 6 comments… add one }
  • Bonnie G June 15, 2011, 5:14 am

    I ♥ these characters. Thanks so much for the help. Its been fun playing with them. ☺ Bonnie

  • barb June 18, 2011, 10:58 am

    Dear Steve:
    You make everything seem so easy.
    I wonder if you could help me with this:
    On gmail I go to themes, and I am trying to put a picture from Iphoto of my dog as background on my emails.
    I upload the picture but it doesn’t become an email background.
    Wonder what I am doing wrong.
    This topic might be of interest to other fans on one of your videos
    Thanks, in advance. Barb

    • Steve June 20, 2011, 2:41 pm

      Hi Barb, are you trying to have your dog as the background for all the emails you send? If so, Gmail’s “themes” won’t help you there. The themes only affect the background of your Gmail “experience”, not the actual emails you send from Gmail. I’ll send you an email to confirm that I understand what you’re trying to do.

      • Clara April 19, 2012, 10:16 am

        I think you’ve just cptaured the answer perfectly

  • Lyn December 13, 2012, 9:06 am

    I found all the symbols..very cool…Now how do I get the symbols into my gmail…e-mail?

    • Steve December 13, 2012, 10:12 am

      Hi Lyn, in the video I showed the symbols in TextEdit, but the Special Characters window is available in the Edit menu of every application. So however you write emails (in a web browser, or in the Mail application) you should find Special Characters in the Edit menu.

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