Some of you may already be using Swiss German or Swiss French keyboards in which case this tip will be of little use. This tip is aimed at people using US keyboard layouts.

These people will probably look at characters like "Ä" and wonder how on earth they could produce such a thing on their own computer. Some people google for them and then manually copy and paste them whenever they need them. Very time consuming and irritating.

Some people use the method where they enter the keyboard codes directly on the numeric keypad. For example holding down ALT while entering "153" on the numeric keypad gives Ö. But this method is time consuming and irritating.

Help is at hand!

The easiest thing to do if you are using these characters is simply change your keyboard layout from US to US-International. Everything will stay the same, except if you press the quote key (") once nothing will happen. If you press " followed by a you'll get ä. If you press ' followed by e you'll get é and so on. Easy, simple and quick.

Please note that I don't want this thread to turn into a technical support thread about how to go about changing your keyboard layout in your operating system - please use google for help if that's what you need - this is the Language Corner not the tech support department

UK keyboard users - there is no UK-International keyboard layout as far as I know. Sorry.

A great tip! ... now all I have to do is learn German spelling, grammar ...

Click START
Choose RUN
type charmap and press enter....
copy/paste at your leisure

The International English route really is the way to go for anyone typing more than three umlauts/accents in a message. The cut/paste from the Character map can truly get tedious.

You can easily *push in the clutch* for the International English for the duration and then then shift back. As soon as you define multiple input languages, you can get a little menu added to the task bar with a keyboard button from which you can switch back and forth. (Be careful: I often accidentally stumble upon the keyboard shortcuts (which I've since disabled) to switch between input locales).

These characters are called "diacriticals" - consisting of the accent character and then the accented character (e.g.: " and then a to form ä). If you ARE in international English and you want one of the characters, if you just press ", you'll see nothing. I often use " followed by a space. Once the diacritical isn't "satisfied" (i.e., after " you enter something for which there's no umlaut), you get the " and then the character. " and then z gives you "z. " and then space gives you only the " (the same holds true for the others, ", ', etc.). ' and e gives you é. Oddly, ' and c gives you ç.

Ok, do I'm a bit of a dope here. There HAS to be an easier way of typing umlauts and other symbols on my PC than using the ALT + (code). I can't seem to figure out what it is though!

Who wants to help out a struggling gal?

Buy a Swiss keyboard and (or just) change the input language of the keyboard in your OS but if you use a US keyboard and just change the language input you might find yourself pecking the keyboard searching for the right key.

Now you come to mention it - how do you do the Alt + code thing if you haven't got a numeric keypad (like I haven't got on my laptop)?

It won't work when I use Alt with the numbers along the top row.

Using NumLock on the keyboard.

I will as soon as I can find it!

Cheers!

There is no NumLock on a non-numeric keyboard..

Hope this helps the struggling gal...

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+SHIFT+^ (CARET), the letter

ã, ñ, õ; Ã, Ñ, Õ = CTRL+SHIFT+~ (TILDE), the letter

ä, ë, ï, ö, ü, ÿ; Ä, Ë, Ï, Ö, Ü, Ÿ = CTRL+SHIFT+: (COLON), the letter

å, Å = CTRL+SHIFT+@, a or A

æ, Æ = CTRL+SHIFT+&, a or A

œ, Œ = CTRL+SHIFT+&, 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+SHIFT+?

¡ = ALT+CTRL+SHIFT+!

ß = CTRL+SHIFT+&, s

Start > Programs > accessories > accessibility > On screen keyboard

That does help. That's what I used on my other laptop. (That I cannot bring) But I had to change the language settings in my OS to English (International). When I went to go do that on this computer, it didn't work. They are both Windows XP. But I think this is a year older maybe.

There is no Start > Programs > whatever on a Mac

If you were to look at the keyboard of a Sony Vaio, you'd find the fourth key from the right on the top row is a neat numlock key.

Actually if we all knew what OS you're using and in what program you're trying to type umlauts it might make it easier to help you. If you're using for example Word on an XP computer you could very easily click Insert on the menu bar and then choose Symbol without having to fool around with any keyboard settings. Or using Pages on a Mac choose Edit then Special Characters.

I had given up on this problem last month, but I thought I'd ask it after seeing the knowledge some posters here have about these things. I brought my old Mac (Mac mini, OS X Tiger) with me to Switzerland and bought a Swiss PC keyboard (Microsoft Wired Keyboard 500) here so I could type French.

The problem is that I can't type the 'at' symbol (@) so I can only copy and paste. On a PC, I would type ALT GR + 2. On a Mac, I think it would be APPLE + F. The ALT GR is inactive on my computer and I've tried combining APPLE with every single key without success.

Of course, it doesn't help that I couldn't find a Mac driver for this keyboard to install. Any ideas or is this the price I pay for not forking over CHF 75 for a Swiss Mac keyboard?

On my mac I use "alt + u" then enter a,o, or u to produce said character with an umlaut. ä, ö, ü Not sure if this works with ctrl on a pc though, I don't have one to test it.

I am on Mac, too, and i get the @ by pressing SHIFT + 2 (the keyboard is US).

The international support in Mac OS X is pretty good. Just go to System Preferences -> International -> Input Menu. Check the languages you want PLUS "Keyboard Viewer" (and "Character Palette" if you want). Then you can select the flag of the input language from the menu bar. You can also select "Show Keyboard Viewer", which will show you the layout of pretty much any keyboard.