Input Spanish Characters

[BrasMexo]

Hi,

I recently got my Samsung Windows 7 laptop and I love it! However, I am writing in Spanish a lot and I require the additional characters and letters for the keyboard. The keyboard shortcuts, like Alt + a number are a little longer. I was wondering if I could set shortcuts or is there a way to do it?

For example, Alt-Gr and then the letter would be perfect! Or shift + ctrl then the letter?

Thank you.

 

[Irene]

Here is a brief table which you might find useful:
.
.

à, è, ì, ò, ù - À, È, Ì, Ò, Ù CTRL+` (ACCENT GRAVE), the letter
.
á, é, í, ó, ú, ý - Á, É, Í, Ó, Ú, Ý CTRL+' (APOSTROPHE), the letter
.
â, ê, î, ô, û Â, Ê, Î, Ô, Û CTRL+^ (CARET), the letter
.
ã, ñ, õ Ã, Ñ, Õ CTRL+~ (TILDE), the letter
.
ä, ë, ï, ö, ü, ÿ Ä, Ë, Ï, Ö, Ü, Ÿ CTRL+: (COLON), the letter
.
å, Å CTRL+@, a or A
.
æ, Æ CTRL+&, a or A
.
œ, Œ CTRL+&, o or O
.
ç, Ç CTRL+, (COMMA), c or C
.
ð, Ð CTRL+' (APOSTROPHE), d or D
.
ø, Ø CTRL+/, o or O
.
¿ ALT+CTRL+?
.
¡ ALT+CTRL+!
.
ß CTRL+&, s

.
.
P.S. I have experienced extreme difficulty in persuading it to display in a legible manner.

The following link might also be useful: Writing in Spanish Using Microsoft Word - Associated Content from Yahoo! - associatedcontent.com

 

[BrasMexo]

Hi,

Thank you for you reply. However, only alt gr + letter seems to activate only a small amount of the accents. Do you know why this is? I also want to be able to write on internet pages, not just Microsoft Word. Please can you help me as to getting all those accents working.

Just tried now and nothing!

 

[Kari]

Have you tried to use Spanish keyboard layout? With it you can type both English and Spanish.

Spanish keyboard layout, lower case:



Spanish keyboard layout, upper case:



Spanish keyboard layout, ALT GR:



Kari

 

[DeVandal]

The purchase of a Spanish layout keyboard is the single best option.

You make find Click-n-Type with a Spanish language pack of some use.

It supports macros.

 

[BrasMexo]

Hi,

Thanks! That works quite well for the ñ and Ñ but for áéíóú the alt-gr doesn't work! And the layout doesn't show which key has these letters? Does anyone know how to use these letters and the others which exist in Spanish.

Thank you!

 

[patrickt]

I touch-type in English so I used a keyboard with Spanish keycaps and switch back and forth between English and Spanish keyboard with Windows. For since words, I use the replace feature in Word.

 

[Kari]

I'm testing the Spanish layout now and for me it works flawless. Apostrophe, Accent Grave, Tilde and Caret work as they should; when you need for instance á, you press the Apostrophe key followed by a, which then produces á.

The idea with these diacritic symbols is when you press the required key, it prints nothing on screen; instead it waits a letter key to be pressed. If the letter pressed is one that can be used together with symbol chosen, like for instance a or e, the symbol is added to the letter, producing á or é. If the letter is one which does not use the symbol chosen, pressing this letter produces two characters: the chosen symbol followed by a letter like for instance ´k or ´w. If you need a single diacritic symbol alone, you press the symbol needed followed by spacebar.



Using Spanish keyboard layout it's very easy and fast to type both in Spanish and English.

Kari

 

[BrasMexo]

That works perfectly! Thank you very much! I'll just switch the layout to ES when typing. One thing, the language seems to change randomly? Is that because I am not double-clicking to change?

Thanks!

 

[Kari]

It does not change randomly, there's logic behind it. Every application, be it a browser or word processor or whatever, remembers the chosen layout until the application is closed and relaunched, when it then reverts back to default layout.

An example. In all my rigs I have three layouts enabled: Finnish (which I also use to type Swedish), German and English. Let's say I have Outlook open, keyboard layout set to Finnish to be able to write an email in Finnish to my mother back home, Word is open to type a letter to my insurance company here in Germany so the layout for Word is set to German, and my browser is open layout set to English to post here on Seven Forums in English. Now every time I switch to Outlook, the Finnish layout is used, when in Word the German, and when I click browser to make it active the layout is changed to English.

Same example as screenshots of my notification area. Please notice the images might look a bit strange to you but it's just because I have my taskbar vertically on the left, not as default horizontally on bottom:







In other words, Windows is intelligent enough to understand and remember that you might want to use different keyboard layouts on different applications.

Kari

 

[BrasMexo]

Hi,

I understand exactly why Windows does that! I also see the logic for it! However, is it possible to change this so that the language is for all programs? Just as I write in both in many programs.

Thanks.

 

[Kari]

Yes. The easiest way is to disable all other layouts, just leave the Spanish. This forces all applications to use Spanish layout.

If you still occasionally need another layout, for instance English, set Spanish layout as default input language and only change to English layout when needed.

You can set the default input language here:


(Click to enlarge)

Kari