how to get european letters from an american keyboard?

Question

I'm trying to write good German and French. I need to write accent aigu, grave and circonflex. And while I'm doing that, it would be sweet to do the cidilla under the "c" in "francais." I type "ae" and "ue" and so forth because I can't type an umlaut. If someone knows how make an English keyboard into a European keyboard *and* get back easily, I'd sure be grateful.

All - I came so close! I want to type on my laptop and have the letters display in French and German (Romanian and Spanish would be cool, too). Cutting and pasting seems like too much trouble. And typing seems like two keystrokes too many. What I'd like is some way to get a European keyboard on my American keyboard with an easy way to get back. I think the Y and the Z are backwards, and the semicolon will be a letter. Sure, I might lose the ability to type a semicolon, but I can live with that loss. (Maybe the semicolon is a ) .. I'm hoping for something like a command for to go from American to European keyboards. Thanks guys, you are trying, but I'm not getting what I need. Keep up the effort! ;)

Answer 1

You don't need to memorize any ALT+key combination that is complicated, just use the Character Map program in Windows. Following step-by-step:-

1. Firstly, click the START button from the Taskbar.
2. Next, choose RUN... Type in CHARMAP.
3. From the CHARMAP dialog box's Font drop-down list, choose the font such as TIMES NEW ROMAN.
4. Select on the desired accent character you like.
5. Click SELECT button.
6. Click COPY button.
7. Finally PASTE it to your textbox/ word processor using CTRL+V shortcut key.

On the Apple Macintosh operating system it can be typed by pressing the [Option] key then typing n followed by either N or n.

Answer 2

If you are using Windows XP it is done as follows. Go to the Control Panel and select "Date, Time, Language and Regional Options". Pick the task "Add other languages". That will open the "Regional and Language" window. Click on "Details". This will open the "Text Services and Input Languages" window. Click the "ADD" button and it should open an "Add Input Language" window. From this window you can select whatever language you need.

Answer 3

Hold [alt] and press a series of numbers on your keypad.

Here is a site with the index of available characters.

" http://www.mesweet.net/printaltsymbols.html "

Hope this helps.
~ZSaD

Answer 4

I have a MacBook and I just discovered that it is really easy for me to do those symbols:
¨ (for ä, ö, ü) is control-u
ß is control-s
´(for é etc) is control-e
ˆ (for â etc) is control-i
ç is control-c