Lots of Umlauts

[jeremyNLSO]

Having recently started some consulting work in Germany, I now have a
responsibility to type documents in German. All my stuff is U.S.--my laptop
is an HP, I have WinXP OS, Office 2003, and a bunch of other software I had
before I came here. I purchased the German proofing tools for Office, but I
find that it's outrageously difficult to add the German special characters to
documents using the "Character Map" utility. I desperately need a method to
enter letters that don't appear in English, specifically a-, o-, and u-with
umlauts (upper and lower case), as well as the german double s that is the
same as the Greek beta. But it needs to be EASY and QUICK. I found out how to
enter the character's hex code and press Alt-X to get the special characters,
but I wonder if there's a better way. Perhaps I could map these characters to
keys on my HP laptop computer... Any ideas?

 

[garfield-n-odie]

See http://www.word.mvps.org/FAQs/General/InsertSpecChars.htm .

 

[James Silverton]

jeremyNLSO wrote on Thu, 1 Dec 2005 15:49:02 -0800:

j> Having recently started some consulting work in Germany, I
j> now have a responsibility to type documents in German. ,
j> but I find that it's outrageously difficult to add the
j> German special characters to documents using the "Character
j> Map" utility. I desperately need a method to enter letters
j> that don't appear in English, specifically a-, o-, and
j> u-with umlauts (upper and lower case), as well as the german
j> double s that is the same as the Greek beta.
j
Try Help on Interrnational Characters in Word. It is not too
difficult to enter most non-English accents using the CTRL key.
The symbols are fairly obvious and easy to remember. For
example, CTRL + : followed by the letter gives the umlauted
letter and the methods for accents and tildes are similar. CTRL
+ & followed by s gives the German double s tho' that is not so
easy to remember.


James Silverton.

 

[James Silverton]

James wrote to jeremyNLSO on Thu, 1 Dec 2005 20:43:38 -0500:

j>> Having recently started some consulting work in Germany, I
j>> now have a responsibility to type documents in German. ,
j>> but I find that it's outrageously difficult to add the
j>> German special characters to documents using the "Character
j>> Map" utility. I desperately need a method to enter letters
j>> that don't appear in English, specifically a-, o-, and
j>> u-with umlauts (upper and lower case), as well as the
j>> german double s that is the same as the Greek beta.
JS> j
JS> Try Help on International Characters in Word. It is not
JS> too difficult to enter most non-English accents using the
JS> CTRL key. The symbols are fairly obvious and easy to
JS> remember. For example, CTRL + : followed by the letter
JS> gives the umlauted letter and the methods for accents and
JS> tildes are similar. CTRL + & followed by s gives the German
JS> double s tho' that is not so easy to remember.

I think the actual Help topic is Shortcut Keys for International
Characters. You might also want to look into using autocorrect
to set up something like a two letter code for common
characters. For example, I have set up ~C to be automatically
replaced by ºC (degree sign C) since I never seem to remember
that ALT + 0186 is the degree sign on the US keyboard.
James Silverton.

 

[jeremyNLSO]

These are certainly helpful replies, and I am grateful for the input. I
actually HAVE stumbled onto the CTRL-: thing, but I find it only works some
of the time. I also need to use these characters in, for example, dialog
boxes, on web pages, and in other programs that are not necessarily Microsoft
(as for address information in QuickBooks). THAT's why I was hoping there
might be a universal across the board fix, that would allow, for example, the
mapping of certain key combinations on the keyboard to these characters.

Any takers?


Thx,

 

[James Silverton]

jeremyNLSO wrote on Fri, 2 Dec 2005 12:40:02 -0800:

j> Any takers?

j> Thx,
j> --
j> jeremyNLSO

j> "jeremyNLSO" wrote:
.............................................................................
These are certainly helpful replies, and I am grateful for the
input. I
actually HAVE stumbled onto the CTRL-: thing, but I find it only
works some
of the time. I also need to use these characters in, for
example, dialog
boxes, on web pages, and in other programs that are not
necessarily Microsoft
(as for address information in QuickBooks). THAT's why I was
hoping there
might be a universal across the board fix, that would allow, for
example, the
mapping of certain key combinations on the keyboard to these
characters.
.............................................................................

I'm not sure what you are responding to. There were two replies
and it would be useful if you would quote sufficient text to
know. Anyway, this group is for MS Office and I think you need a
more general newsgroup. There are ways of using non-English
language keyboards in XP but I can't help you there. There are
also keyboards with programmable keys. Logitech makes such
things but, again, I have no information.

James Silverton.