I can never remember all those codes, so I go to Character Map and copy the characters I need, and paste them at the bottom of my document. Then I type something distinctive wherever I want to use a special character, like zzz for the German character ß or nnn for the Spanish ñ.
When I'm finished with the document, I copy each character I want, and paste it into the "replace with" box of the "replace" function.
Works pretty well, and I don't have to tax my memory.
-Joe-

P.S. John in Kansas, you may be able to sell those upside-down characters to Bill D, a rather upside-down character himself...(sorry, Bill)