Accented Letters, etc., in Email

I use a new Lenovo laptop with Windows 8.1 to work with my Cox.net email. It performs just fine in Word when using "ALT+" to access characters beyond the very basic keyboard.

   People often need to use an accented letter in their written communications. But in Cox.net email, I've found no way to access commonly used accented characters like lc a-grave (as in à la and voilà) or lc o-circumflex (as in Rhône); yet some others are usable in your email via their normal Windows key combo, e.g., lc e-acute (as in rosé) = ALT+0233. All the usual Latin-1 character set should be available, as a fundamental requirement. What are Cox's plans to fix this shortfall?  

   [P.S.: I had to use a Character Map app to insert the accented letters into this message—using ALT+0233, for instance, aborted an earlier attempt to compose this! Yet I used that dash (ALT+0151) now just fine. Why is Cox's treatment so inconsistently lame for so many non-keytop characters, even here??]