Sentence:  A more conservative approach, particularly if your author is a skilled computer user, would be to replace the problem characters with simple words or codes that are guaranteed to transfer successfully between computers. For example, you could replace "é" with "e-<WSD>acute</WSD>" if that particular character is causing problems. ... The author could then do a search and replace to change all instances of "e-<WSD>acute</WSD>" back to "é" before publication. 
Meaning of the word marked with <WSD> tags:  After a letter of the alphabet: having an acute accent.