For one-off characters there are almost always keyboard shortcuts in Office to do that. For example:

For the complete guide to using the keyboard to insert international characters see: Keyboard shortcuts for international characters.

Insert a check mark or other symbol using the keyboard with ASCII or Unicode character codes

You can also use the character code of the symbol as a keyboard shortcut. Symbols and special characters are either inserted using ASCII or Unicode codes. You can tell which is which when you look up the code for the character.

  1. Go to the Insert tab of the ribbon and click Symbol > More Symbols just like you were going to insert the symbol using the dialog box.
  2. Scroll up or down the list to find the symbol you want; note that you might have to change the font or the subset to locate it.
    Tip: The Segoe UI Symbol font has a very large collection of Unicode symbols to choose from.
  3. Towards the bottom right you'll see boxes for Character code and a from:. The character code is what you'll enter to insert this symbol from the keyboard and the from: tells you what kind of character it is. If from: says 'Unicode (hex)' it's a Unicode character. If from: says 'Symbol (Decimal)' then it's an ASCII character.

Unicode

ASCII

Inserting Unicode Characters

  1. Type the character code where you want to insert the Unicode symbol.
  2. Press ALT+X to convert the code to the symbol.
Tips:

Inserting ASCII Characters

Notes:
  1. On the Home tab, in the Font group, change the font to Wingdings.
  2. Press and hold the ALT key and type the character code on the numeric keypad. Remember to add any leading zeroes you need to get to four digits of length. For example: ALT+0252 will insert a checkmark symbol.
Important: Don't skip step #1 otherwise you probably won't get the right character when you enter the code.

Make sure you change the font back to your previous font after inserting the symbol.

Word 2010 lets you sprinkle characters beyond the keyboard’s 26 letters of the alphabet, numbers, a smattering of symbols, and punctuation thingies. For example, Word provides foreign language letters and symbols — all sorts of fun stuff. You can insert a special character or symbol in your document in a couple of ways:
Some symbols have shortcut keys. They appear at the bottom of the Symbol dialog box. For example, the shortcut for the degree symbol is Ctrl+@, spacebar — press Ctrl+@ (actually, Ctrl+Shift+2), and then type a space.