Windows – Find Alt-code for any character

In MS Word, place the cursor right after a character and enter Alt X (i.e., press the X key while having the Alt key pressed down). In any reasonably modern version of Word, this turns the character to its Unicode code number. To get the name, you can then visit http://www.unicode.org or use Character Map program in Windows, for example. Or you could install BabelPad, a great Unicode editor which shows the Unicode number and Unicode name of each character as you move the cursor right before it.

Alternative, for more fun maybe, you can use http://shapecatcher.com/ and draw the character. For simple patterns, it is rather effective. It immediately recognized that your first character is “White square with upper right quadrant” U+25F3, from my rather clumsy drawing.

As far as I know, the Alt nnnn (nnnn decimal > 255) method is a RichEdit feature and therefore works on selected programs only, such as WordPad and MS Word. In other programs, the number entered, nnnn, is reduced modulo 256 to yield a number in the range 0...255, interpreted according to the code page in use.

Cf. to Insert Unicode characters via the keyboard? which describes some alternative methods. Unfortunately, the Alt + xxxx (xxxx hexadecimal; e.g., Alt + 2026 for “…” ) method is apparently disabled by default, and you need to modify Windows registry to allow it. In addition to the UnicodeInput utility, there is also Unicode Input by Name, but these methods are not quite as convenient for fast typing as Alt methods.