Microsoft has made it easy. You don't have to memorize meaningless series of numbers.
With just a few additional keystrokes, you get all the accented letters you need for French, Spanish, Italian, German, Swedish, and a few other languages.
After typing the accented letters in Word, you can copy and paste the document into an email.
You need to press and hold CTRL, and sometimes Shift or ALT. Press and hold them all together.
Then release.
Then type the normal letter that appears on the keyboard.
For the capitalized version of the accented letter, press and hold Shift, then the normal letter.
Grave (à è ì ù ò)
To get à, press and hold CTRL and the left apostrophe that appears on the same key as ~,
then "a".
Same process for à è ì ù ò
Acute (á é í ó ú ý )
To get á , press and hold CTRL and the apostrophe (near the enter key),
then "a".
Same process for á é í ó ú ý
Circumflex (â ê î ô û)
To get â, press and hold CTRL, shift and the "caret" over the 6,
then "a".
Same process for â ê î ô û
Tilde (ã ñ õ)
To get ñ, press and hold CTRL, shift and the "~",
then "a".
Same process for ã ñ õ
Umlaut (tréma) (ä ë ï ö ü ÿ)
To get ä, press and hold CTRL, shift and ":",
then "a".
Same process for ä ë ï ö ü ÿ
Circle over a letter (å)
To get å, press and hold CTRL, shift and "@",
then "a".
Joined letters (æ)
To get æ, press and hold CTRL, shift and "&",
then "a".
Joined letters (œ)
To get œ, press and hold CTRL, shift and "&",
then "o".
Cedilla (ç)
To get ç, press and hold CTRL, comma
then "c".
Spanish inverted marks (¡ ¿)
To get ¡, press and hold CTRL, ALT, Shift and "!"
Same process for ¡ ¿
Euro €
Type 20ac, and then press ALT and X together.