# Character Map
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/character-map/306955
**Category:** Factual Questions
**Created:** [June 5, 2005, 2:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/character-map/306955 "2005-06-05T02:19:09Z")
**Posts on this page:** 9
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@cruel\_butterfly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cruel_butterfly)
#### Post date: [June 5, 2005, 2:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/character-map/306955/1 "2005-06-05T02:19:09Z")
I fear that this question, if posed to a live audience, would produce a roomful of blank stares, but here goes…
Has anyone ever heard of the Character Map disappearing from a computer? I use it all the time to access symbols, punctuation marks, and phonetic characters when I am composing documents…now it’s gone…GONE! I even tried searching the entire computer for it, thinking it may have been moved accidentally from the “System Tools” menu. No luck.
I am at a loss.
Help or even a little sympathy would be appreciated.
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### Author:  [@Reply](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Reply)
#### Post date: [June 5, 2005, 2:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/character-map/306955/2 "2005-06-05T02:20:38Z")
Which OS are you running? On some of the older ones, you may have to install it from the Windows CD if it disappeared.
But first try typing “charmap” into Start -\> Run. The full path is %SystemRoot%\system32\charmap.exe
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### Author:  [@cruel\_butterfly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cruel_butterfly)
#### Post date: [June 5, 2005, 2:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/character-map/306955/3 "2005-06-05T02:22:39Z")
Reply,
I am on Windows 98, and the “run” thing didn’t work. I just got a message that it was not found…
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### Author:  [@Reply](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Reply)
#### Post date: [June 5, 2005, 2:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/character-map/306955/4 "2005-06-05T02:25:49Z")
In that case, try going to Add/Remove Programs (under the control panel) and then the tab that says “Windows Setup”. See if you can add it there under System Tools or whatever group it’s under.
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### Author:  [@cruel\_butterfly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cruel_butterfly)
#### Post date: [June 5, 2005, 2:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/character-map/306955/5 "2005-06-05T02:29:01Z")
Thank you. You have been very helpful.
…now if I could only remember where I put that dang Windows98 Second Edition CD-ROM…
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### Author:  [@cruel\_butterfly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cruel_butterfly)
#### Post date: [June 5, 2005, 2:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/character-map/306955/6 "2005-06-05T02:30:21Z")
wow…i thought those words would be really small…sorry
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### Author:  [@wolf\_meister](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolf_meister)
#### Post date: [June 5, 2005, 2:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/character-map/306955/7 "2005-06-05T02:50:10Z")
**cruel butterfly**
This won’t restore your character map but at least it will enable you to type some of those characters you probably want such as: ™ ± ² ¾ and so on.
[http://www.1728.com/altchar.htm](http://www.1728.com/altchar.htm)
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### Author:  [@Reply](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Reply)
#### Post date: [June 5, 2005, 2:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/character-map/306955/8 "2005-06-05T02:52:35Z")
If you can’t find the CD, you can try one of these two options:
1. I found a few charmap.exe’s floating around from different versions of Windows. Get them in a zip file [here](http://xv9.net/charmap.zip). However, I’m not sure if any of them will work.
2. You might want to try a third-party charmap replacement, like [My CharMap](http://www.lincolnbeach.com/mycharmap.asp).
Good luck.
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### Author:  [@Number](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Number)
#### Post date: [June 5, 2005, 3:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/character-map/306955/9 "2005-06-05T03:58:27Z")
Search your hard drive for **WIN98\_66.CAB**. Open it and copy **charmap.exe** to your WINDOWS directory.