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Insert special characters in an ASP.NET Core rich text editor

The special characters panel open on the toolbar

Copyright signs, currency, arrows and accented letters are hard to type on many keyboards. The character panel gives people a place to click them. The button is insertchars, in the default and full toolbars.

Add it

<richtextbox name="Body"
             toolbar="{insertchars,bold,italic}|{undo,redo}"
             height="300px"></richtextbox>

The sets

How they are saved

A character from the Common, Unicode, European or Greek sets is saved as the real character, so it works everywhere, including search and copy and paste. Make sure your page and your database column are Unicode: nvarchar in SQL Server, and utf8mb4 in MySQL. A plain varchar column can turn these into question marks.

A warning about symbol fonts

Webdings, Wingdings and Symbol are fonts, not characters. Their symbols only look right where that font is installed, and they can appear as ordinary letters on a phone. For a public website, prefer a real character from the Common set, such as ✓, over a Wingdings tick.

Emoji

For faces and pictures there is a separate emoji picker.

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