It works just fine for me (XP Pro, Office 2k3). You do have to make sure that the font selected in Character Map is the same as the format of the cell in Excel. Some fonts have a much more limited set of characters than others. You also have to double-click the character in the Character Map grid (or click the "Select" button) to place it in the little text box before you can copy it. Just choosing a characater from the grid and using ctrl-c doesn't copy it.