Spanish language added, but no characters available

[javelin]

I installed Spanish (Mexican) per instructions in my kid's school
program, and it says I should be able to type CTRL+SHIFT+a to get the a
with an accent, and various other shourtcuts. None of these work.

In fact, the only way I can get a Spanish character to appear is by
using the ascii codes (ALT+0241 for the Spanish ñ, etc)

By the way, I should clarify that I can find some characters in wierd
places if I hit the ALT+SHIFT combo -- just not all the characters, and
then I can't use certain keys (like the = sign becomes an upside-down
question mark ¿

Any ideas why the special keyboard mappings would not work? Any special
program I can buy (or download for free)to give me the character
shortcuts I need?

Thanks a bunch.

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

Word has built-in keyboard shortcuts for those characters that you can use
regardless of what language you have selected (see
http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/General/InsertSpecChars.htm). To type more easily
in a foreign language, you need to enable an international keyboard layout.



I installed Spanish (Mexican) per instructions in my kid's school
program, and it says I should be able to type CTRL+SHIFT+a to get the a
with an accent, and various other shourtcuts. None of these work.

In fact, the only way I can get a Spanish character to appear is by
using the ascii codes (ALT+0241 for the Spanish ñ, etc)

By the way, I should clarify that I can find some characters in wierd
places if I hit the ALT+SHIFT combo -- just not all the characters, and
then I can't use certain keys (like the = sign becomes an upside-down
question mark ¿

Any ideas why the special keyboard mappings would not work? Any special
program I can buy (or download for free)to give me the character
shortcuts I need?

Thanks a bunch.

 

[javelin]

Thanks, Suzanne. I'm familiar with the special characters menu, but I
was needing to use the language shortcuts, such as CTRL+SHIFT+n = ñ,
because I need to access these in other programs.

You say I need to enable the international keyboard layout. Would you
guide me in the right direction to do that? I really thought that just
adding the extra language would do the trick.

Thanks.

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

I'm not clear on what you want here; you can use the built-in keyboard
shortcuts, but Ctrl+Shift+n is not going to give you ñ unless you have
assigned that shortcut to that character; the built-in shortcut is Ctrl+~,
n.

To use an international keyboard layout, you must go to Control Panel |
Regional Options | Input Locales, and click Change..., then Add..., select
the keyboard you want and install it.


Thanks, Suzanne. I'm familiar with the special characters menu, but I
was needing to use the language shortcuts, such as CTRL+SHIFT+n = ñ,
because I need to access these in other programs.

You say I need to enable the international keyboard layout. Would you
guide me in the right direction to do that? I really thought that just
adding the extra language would do the trick.

Thanks.