Typing 'foreign' characters e.g. Umlauts

[Bethgem]

Thanks for that info, danishdots. Most useful. I hadn't known about it.
I saw that I could create a shortcut for the one I want to use regularly.
It does away with having to press the num-lock on, then pressing the alt key and then pressing numbers 129 to get it. It is the ü.
My shortcut is a lot easier, but it didn't work on here as it isn't in Word, so I used the old way to get it to show to you.
Cheers

[johnbhoy]

This is a great thread, thanks to all for posting, very helpful

Freundliche Grüße

johnbhoy

[Billyblue]

Yes, very interesting to see how people approach this.

If anyone with a laptop wants to be able to use the ASCII characters with the numerical keyboard on the side, you can also get an external numerical keyboard to plug into one of your ports.  It never works on the numbers across the top.

By far the easiest way, I find, is to use the Insert Symbol function in Word and then cut and paste, which is one of the methods suggested earlier.

Dawn M

[FosseWay]

If there is a particular second language you type in regularly, you can also simply download the keyboard driver for that language and toggle between the two as required. In the old days when Mac OS supported very few diacritics, the only way I could find of getting the Old English characters Þþ and Ðð was to download the Icelandic keyboard driver, which allocates a particular keystroke to those characters. In Mac OS 9 it was simply a case of clicking on the relevant flag at the top right of the screen to change layout; I haven't needed to do this in Windows or Mac OS X, so I'm not sure how it works there, but I can't imagine it's any more complicated than that.

The only issues are:
1. There's obviously a finite number of keys, so if you add a new character it has to be at the expense of something else, which you'll have to look up laboriously using the various methods given in this thread if you need it.

2. Some keyboard layouts do more than just replacing some little-used sign (such as §) with your foreign character of choice, and instead mess with the entire layout of the keyboard. The French keyboard, for example, begins AZERTY.

[denyse_aus]

Turn your Numeral Lock on. Hold the Alt key down & type the numbers on the numeric key pad
é  130
ä  132
Ä  142
ö  148
Ö  153
ü  129
Ü  154
ß  225
€  0128

[LizzieW]

Thanks for that, I usually open Word and add from symbols, then copy and paste.  Your method is much quicker.  If it's a longish sentence, I type it in English and then google translate. 

[Erato]

I just keep a copy of the Character Map accessory on the desktop so any symbol is quickly available no matter what program I'm using.  殼£åöþ.

[Chase23]

Character Map which is built into Windows has all the foreign characters, fractions etc. that you might need. Look in Programs/Accessories/System Tools to find it. I have it pinned to the Start Menu so it's easily found when I want it.