From 1980 to 2007 the number of Spanish speakers in the United States increased by 211 percent to 23.4 million, according to the U.S. Census Bureau -- meaning that you're more likely to need Spanish language characters in your PowerPoint presentation. Though most computer keyboards don't have keys for the unique characters in the Spanish language, you can add those characters quickly by using the Insert tools in PowerPoint. You can also copy and paste Unicode characters into PowerPoint; the Spanish symbols will display in most fonts.
Launch the PowerPoint presentation in which you want to insert Spanish characters.
Click the "Insert" tab in the Microsoft Office ribbon, then click "Symbol" from the Symbols section on the right. If the button is grayed out, click to select a text box where you want to type the Spanish characters.
Choose "Latin-1 Supplement" from the drop-down menu in the upper right to choose that subset of characters.
Locate the character you want to insert -- for example, the initial question mark, "¿" -- and click "Insert." Choose any other characters you need and then click "Close." The characters will be in the text box you selected.
Choose the subset "Latin Extended-A" to access characters like the eñe or accented letters.
- If you need to type in Spanish frequently, you can install the keyboard layout in Windows and switch to it as needed (see Resources).
- You can copy and paste characters in a Unicode font directly into PowerPoint. For example, the website Spanish Typeit (see Resources) lets you click buttons for the different characters; you can then copy and paste them into PowerPoint.