Keyboard changes from Norwegian to English character set
Thread poster: Geoffrey Barrow
Geoffrey Barrow
Geoffrey Barrow
Local time: 19:26
Norwegian to English
Apr 7, 2004

I expect this is really simple for a lot of you, but I wish somebody could explain to me why every now and then my keyboard changes its character set when I am working in MS Word. This started a week or so ago, when I received a document from one of my regular clients (an agency). Normally I use a Norwegian keyboard, but when I opened the document in question, the keys were changed; among other things the three "extra" Norwegian vowels were not there, and of course a lot of the punctuation marks... See more
I expect this is really simple for a lot of you, but I wish somebody could explain to me why every now and then my keyboard changes its character set when I am working in MS Word. This started a week or so ago, when I received a document from one of my regular clients (an agency). Normally I use a Norwegian keyboard, but when I opened the document in question, the keys were changed; among other things the three "extra" Norwegian vowels were not there, and of course a lot of the punctuation marks were in different places. Nothing I could do would restore the keyboard settings, so in order to get the job finished on time I connected a US English keyboard and used that. Fortunately I have never learned to type, so I tend to be looking at the keyboard, rather than the screen, when I am working! I realised that the character set which my computer was using was now UK English, because Shift-2 gave quotation marks instead of @. There's also another slight difference, though I can't remember what it is right now.

Anyway, having finished that document, I returned to my familiar Norwegian keyboard, and thought I wouldn't experience the problem again. However, from time to time, for no apparent reason, I discover that the keyboard character set has changed to UK English again, so that I get < instead of ;, " for *, and so on. In contrast with the incident mentioned above, if I close down Word, restart it and re-open the file I am working on, the keyboard is back to normal again.

As I say, no doubt this is old hat for a lot of people, but I really don't understand why it happens. Could somebody give me an explanation, and preferably a solution. It's really annoying when your parentheses suddenly become reversed and your hyphen becomes a slash!!!

Oh, before I forget, I am using Windows XP and Office 2000.
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Jørgen Madsen
Jørgen Madsen  Identity Verified
Local time: 00:26
English to Danish
+ ...
I've had the exact same problem Apr 8, 2004

You can change back to Norwegian (or in my case Danish) keyboard by going to Control Panel (Kontrolpanel)>Keyboard (Tastatur)>Input Locales (Landestandarder).
At the bottom you can tick the Enable indicator on taskbar (Aktiver indikator på proceslinjen) box so that you can always monitor the "keyboard language" on the taskbar (EN, DA, NO etc.)
Finally you use a shortcut to change between character sets. It's also indicated under Input Locales. Standard on my machine is Left ALT+Shif
... See more
You can change back to Norwegian (or in my case Danish) keyboard by going to Control Panel (Kontrolpanel)>Keyboard (Tastatur)>Input Locales (Landestandarder).
At the bottom you can tick the Enable indicator on taskbar (Aktiver indikator på proceslinjen) box so that you can always monitor the "keyboard language" on the taskbar (EN, DA, NO etc.)
Finally you use a shortcut to change between character sets. It's also indicated under Input Locales. Standard on my machine is Left ALT+Shift.
Good luck
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Geoffrey Barrow
Geoffrey Barrow
Local time: 19:26
Norwegian to English
TOPIC STARTER
Yes, but I wonder why it happens! Apr 8, 2004

Jørgen Madsen wrote:

You can change back to Norwegian (or in my case Danish) keyboard by going to Control Panel (Kontrolpanel)>Keyboard (Tastatur)>Input Locales (Landestandarder).


Thanks Jørgen. Yes, when I think about it, I used to have this configured, and could change from No to En either from the toolbar or with a keyboard shortcut, but I disabled the option because I was used to the Norwegian keyboard and never used anything else. Anyway, after posting my question yesterday, I suddenly thought of going into settings and REMOVING the definition of English keyboard. Presumably the machine will now not be able to redefine my character set, even if it wants to. What intrigues me is why it should want to anyway! What causes Windows to change the setting, apparently at random, in the middle of a document? Surely there isn't something in the document itself which causes this?


 


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Keyboard changes from Norwegian to English character set






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