I use XP. Why can I no longer type ascii characters.

[melsungen]

I have used ascii characters to type various accents for years. New laptop
bought last year with XP worked ok until recently with the difference that I
just had to use function + alt then the number.

Now it doesn't work - apart from sometimes for e acute. Not only this but if
I try to insert an accent when e mailing it will often take me out of the e
mail and my message is lost.

I know I can insert accents using symbol but this is not practical when
typing a longish text. And also I have used the numbers for so long I know
them off by heart .

Ideas please?

 

[Bob I]

Perhaps it's caused by the way the laptop keyboard driver is working(or
should I say in this case NOT working).

 

[melsungen]

Thank you Bob. So what do I do about that? Since writing earlier on I
tested out all the characters again in e mail - some work and some just ruin
the e mails by coming out of the system. I have also assigned shortcut keys
for writing in word etc but they don't work for e mails.

 

[Bob I]

have you tried switching on numlock and then doing it instead of
Fn+Alt+xxxx. Otherwise it's a laptop compatibility problem.

 

[melsungen]

using num lock does not work. Fn + alt does work with some of the characters
but not all - this is why it is so aggravating. I can not see why it is a
compatibility problem since it was working fine until recently.

 

[Bob I]

That sounds like you may have replaced some of the laptop drivers with a
not quite correct version. If you "updated" the drivers, please look in
Device Manager to do a "rollback" to the correct one. To determine if
it's an office issue or a laptop driver issue. Try opening Notepad and
creating the characters there. Also keep in mind that the char number is
not the same from one character set to another.