How to get French accent marks in Windows 8 programs

[fritzfield]

I need to communicate in French w/ a genealogist cousin from Quebec. While I am able to write in French using my qwerty US keyboard, I do not know how to attach (or even find them) the accent marks where they are needed, for instance the first e in Quebec should have an "accent aigu".

In my old WordPerfect program I would use CTRL-W and I could get the letter w/ the accent and then paste it into my composition. But how do I do it correctly in Hotmail or even posting here on Anandtech? I hope I have explained the problem correctly.

Any idea/help would be appreciated.

 

[jhansman]

This is not so much a function of Win8 as it is the application you are writing with. In Word 2007 (and later versions, I suspect) you can use the Symbol command on the Insert tab, pick the font you need and you should see it in the list of choices.

 

[lxskllr]

See if this page is of use...

http://superuser.com/questions/64178/compose-key-on-windows

I use Debian, and the ability to easily build characters is a huge selling point for me.

 

[corkyg]

All you need is to use the proper codes and you can create any foreign language diacritical . . .ê, ç, é, è, etc.

Québec, Montréal.

http://www.ascii.cl/htmlcodes.htm

 

[fritzfield]

Thank you, I have it now.

 

[mikeymikec]

Is Character Map not available in Win8?

Start > Run > charmap

 

[corkyg]

Is Character Map not available in Win8?

Start > Run > charmap

Absolutely is. It is charmap.exe located in /Windows/System32 folder. Youcan put a shortcut to it on whatever you use for a desktop.

Good call.

 

[colonelciller]

another way: go to language setings in windows and set up a keyboard language of french. then use the toggle icon at the bottom right of the taskbar to select the french keyboard and windows will treat your keyboard as if it were a french keyboard. the downside is that you need to know the key mapping. this is very doable however and i do it all the time for another language.

another way: buy a french keyboard. if they're not too expensive then why not!

 

[Quantos]

another way: go to language setings in windows and set up a keyboard language of french. then use the toggle icon at the bottom right of the taskbar to select the french keyboard and windows will treat your keyboard as if it were a french keyboard. the downside is that you need to know the key mapping. this is very doable however and i do it all the time for another language.

another way: buy a french keyboard. if they're not too expensive then why not!

Yep, that's the way I work as well. Keyboard is physically english, and I have both languages on it. I've gotten used to the shortcut to switch language (LeftAlt-RightShift) so it's pretty efficient once you know the location of each key on both keyboard.

 

[_Rick_]

Yep, that's the way I work as well. Keyboard is physically english, and I have both languages on it. I've gotten used to the shortcut to switch language (LeftAlt-RightShift) so it's pretty efficient once you know the location of each key on both keyboard.

This is the reason I was looking for a blank keyboard.
I'm using three keymaps habitually (DE_de, FR_fr and EN_us), and ended up getting a en_UK labeled keyboard from Filco's Ninja series. A reasonable compromise. ALT+SHIFTing becomes second nature, and actually typing in a language, that is not the keyboard language becomes quite hard, because the language is eventually linked to the way the fingers move. Though a long life of QWERTZ has ruined me slightly.
Nonetheless it is possible to become reasonably proficient, and certainly faster over the medium term, than hunting for characters.

 

[Dahak]

why not use alt-code. hold down the alt key and press the number code
alt-codes
for example alt-0233 gives you é