Many a times certain keys on the keyboard may stop working and it becomes difficult for you to type. In such cases the only alternative is to buy a new keyboard.

There is an alternative though if you do not want to spend money on buying a new keyboard. To make use of this alternative you will have to turn the Num Lock to on and use the Alt key to type in the characters you want to.

  

For example when you can press and hold the Alt Key and type in 65 on the numeric keypad it will output the character "A". In this case the number 65 is the ASCII (American Standard Code for Information Interchange) equivalent of the character "A". In case you want to type in "a" you will have to use hold down the Alt Key and type in 92 on the numeric pad.

You can output any type of characters using this trick. This is specifically helpful when are stuck with broken or unusable keys and you may want to delay buying a new keyboard.

For a complete list of all such Alt Codes for typing in characters you can download the Alt Codes Reference Sheet compiled by usefulshortcuts.com.

Would this be helpful to you if your keys don’t work. Do let me know through your valuable comments. If you have a question that you want answered feel free to contact us and we will definitely try to help you out.

Image under CC license from Flickr.