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how to enter Spanish characters on a French keyboard? [resolved]
Thread poster: Andreas THEODOROU

Andreas THEODOROU  Identity Verified
Spain
Local time: 14:56
Greek to English
+ ...
Aug 22, 2010

Hello all

Once again, Word’s so-called intelligent behaviour is proving to be more of a hindrance than a help.

My aim is in theory quite simple:
I want to continue using the French keyboard layout (AZERTY) and be able to enter Spanish characters (accented vowels etc).

This seems impossible in Word 2007.

I thought about a solution using Auto-Correct, where for example
"a-" is corrected to "á"
"i-" is corrected to "í"

In Word, Auto-Correct entries are necessarily attached to a particular language (even though this is not at all apparent from the entry window).

So I Set Language to English for the entire document before entering my Auto-Correct entries.

The problem is that Word auto-detects the language as I am typing so when it detects that the text is in Spanish (i.e. not English), the Auto-Correct entries are not applied.

I've had a good look but cannot find a way to swtich off auto-detection of languages so I assume that this is not an option.

Anyone have any ideas?

Andreas



[Edited at 2010-08-22 11:07 GMT]

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polyglot45
English to French
+ ...
ALT keys or "caractères spéciaux" ? Aug 22, 2010

Maybe I have misunderstood and admittedly I don't yet have Word 2007 but I can type in the odd "foreign" letter using either the ALT codes or by going into "Insertion" and then "caractères spéciaux". I presume that since you have AZERTY, you also have commands in French ?

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Natalie  Identity Verified
Poland
Local time: 14:56
Member (2002)
English to Russian
+ ...

MODERATOR
Hi Andreas Aug 22, 2010

The best thing is turning off language auto-detection in Word and assign language manually.

Simply assign keyboard shorcuts to necessary symbols or letters. Here is a webpage explaining how to do it:
http://tortoiseshell.net/coffeebreak/blog/index.php/119/how-to-assign-a-shortcut-key-to-a-symbol-in-word-2007.html

Hope this helps,
Natalia

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Aude Sylvain  Identity Verified
France
Local time: 14:56
English to French
+ ...
clavier+ Aug 22, 2010

You may use that small app to assign keyboard shortcuts to specific characters.
I don't think you need to deactivate the language auto-recognition (which can be useful!)

http://www.softpedia.com/get/Office-tools/Other-Office-Tools/Clavier.shtml

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Soonthon LUPKITARO(Ph.D.)  Identity Verified
Thailand
Local time: 19:56
Member (2004)
English to Thai
+ ...
Word Macro Aug 22, 2010

Aude Sylvain wrote:

You may use that small app to assign keyboard shortcuts to specific characters.
I don't think you need to deactivate the language auto-recognition (which can be useful!)

This is also easy to use Word Macro + its keyboard shortcut for a quick assigment.

Best regards,

Soonthon Lupkitaro

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Andreas THEODOROU  Identity Verified
Spain
Local time: 14:56
Greek to English
+ ...
TOPIC STARTER
found it Aug 22, 2010

I replied earlier but don't know where my reply has gone.

I found the Language AutoDetect so swtiched it off - now I can enter Spanish characters.

The snag is that I have to enter a space then the shortcut (eg "a-"), then go back and delete the extra space (all this because AutoCrrect entries are considered to be words).

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Andreas THEODOROU  Identity Verified
Spain
Local time: 14:56
Greek to English
+ ...
TOPIC STARTER
thank you Aug 22, 2010

The solution with the shortcut assignment is perfect!!!

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Aude Sylvain  Identity Verified
France
Local time: 14:56
English to French
+ ...
@Soonthon Aug 22, 2010

Soonthon LUPKITARO(Ph.D.) wrote:

Aude Sylvain wrote:

You may use that small app to assign keyboard shortcuts to specific characters.
I don't think you need to deactivate the language auto-recognition (which can be useful!)

This is also easy to use Word Macro + its keyboard shortcut for a quick assigment.

Best regards,

Soonthon Lupkitaro


Hi Soonthon,

You're absolutely right!

I had forgotten that the asker was only concerned with MS Word.
Clavier+'s great aspect is that the keyboard shortcuts would work in any other application (e.g. standalone CAT tools. This saves me a *lot* of time in WFP for instance, no need to use the characters table any more to type É, À, french quotes « etc.).

And as far as MS Word is concerned, I believe that Clavier+ can be used while not turning-off the language auto-recognition feature - and I do find the feature is useful sometimes, but that's very personal...




[Edited at 2010-08-22 16:54 GMT]

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how to enter Spanish characters on a French keyboard? [resolved]

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