Typing 'foreign' characters e.g. Umlauts

[Berlin-Bob]

Hi Johnnie,

most laptops have a Funktion key, usually labelled Fn and coloured blue or red, and most of the keys on the right have several descriptions on the key, some of which have the same colour as the Fn key - that's your numeric pad 

Fortunately, the Fn and Alt key are next to each other (one hand) leaving your other hand free to find the "num pad" numbers.

There are a few other things which require a lot of contortions, but at least this one is fairly easy.

Or, even better:  if your main machine is a laptop, buy a normal keyboard and plug that in (when you are working at a desk or table).  This is now my standard set-up, and it does make life so-o-o  much easier. 

The keyboard is almost twice the width of the laptop, but such a pleasure, not to have such cramped fingers 

Bob

[emmsthheight]

Hi Julie and Bob.

Thank you for this topic.

I've got a name that turns up enough different ways, before you start on umlauts etc -Bockma(n)/ Bodeman(n) - supposedly with umlauts, but often turns up with an "e"m or an"a" or ".

So it makes for endless variations!

What I'm wondering is, the two letter alternatives you gave, Bob, are they more or less standard for people in a fairly formal situation - eg if someone sees something on a form?

So should it narrow the results on a respectable German search engine if I use the best two letters?

Also, if I put my two letters in - "oe"?, would it be normal for the search engine in German to look for "0 umlaut" as well?

Thank you again.

Emms

[meles]

I tried to put some Cyrillic letters on my website. I wrote in Word, and copied it across, but they did not come out.

Is there another way?

meles

[emmsthheight]

Hi again!

Just in case anyone looking at your main topic is writing a letter in a wordprocessor, certainly Word, does every one know that they can use keyboard shortcuts:-

Acute
[Ctrl] ['] followed by character. (Use apostrophe middlethree fromright)

Grave
[Ctrl][`]    ,,          ,,          ,,     (Use the top left key beside the numbers)

Tilda
[Ctrl][shift][~]       ,,    ,,       ,,

Circumflex
[Ctrl][Shift][^]  ,,    ,,    ,,

Umlaut
[Ctrl][Shift][:]     ,,          ,,       ,,
Word only accents letters you would normally put an accent on.

I'm sure these are in the original posts, but just in case it's of any use to anyone for typing off rooschat.

best wishes.

Emms

[LizzieW]

When I'm using Word and need an accented letter, or fractions etc. I just click on Insert, then symbols.  Once you have used an accented letter or fraction a couple of times, they show up as Recently Used Symbols, so you don't have to scroll through them all.

If you want to put an accented letter on here, all you need to do is open a word document, click on Insert, then symbols, chose the one you want, insert in the blank Word document, then copy (or cut) and paste.  For example:

έ ΰ ö ç ά

Lizzie

[lesleyhannah]

é

got it now - you need to do it in Word then cut and paste. I do have a name on my tree with an acute accent. I get round this by typing the word café, which in Word automatically comes up with an accent over the é. I then delete the caf ! I'm going to have to experiment to see whether going through the Character Map route is quicker. (Unfortunately I don't know any English words that automatically bring up other accents!)

[LizzieW]

Just seems easier to go via Word than to remember to string of numbers.

I suppose if it is quite a lot of words you need, you could change the default language on your computer from English to German or French and then just type in Word and cut and paste.  I can do it in Japanese on my laptop - except I don't know any Japanese

Lizzie

[Berlin-Bob]

If you are typing these characters constantly, then it might make sense to write (and store) a short memo in Word, with all the special characters in it, then just copy&paste from this "memo".

emms,

I just tried putting wörtlich in a search engine and it found wörtlich and woertlich.

I then tried putting woertlich in a search engine and it found wörtlich and woertlich.

So it looks like you can search for either

Bob

[emmsthheight]

Hi

Thank you Bob.

Maybe I'll have another go!

Best wishes

Emms