Canadians +others, when you type in French, how...

[Nayov]

do you type accents? I know about the ALT + numbers trick, but it is tedious. ( http://nbii-thesaurus.ornl.gov/thesaurus/accents.html )Is there a way to make the keyboard do it automatically rather than having to jump through hoops?

 

[d00df00d]

If you want to do it without ALT codes, you need a French keyboard.

 

[Nayov]

Something I can do through the Windows settings?

 

[uc50ic4more]

You'll have to switch keyboard layouts, if that's possible in your OS.

 

[StevieC]

My partner is Trilingual (English, French, Spanish) and he has a multilingual keyboard with all the accents on a standard US keyboard. He then switches between the various accents using function keys.

 

[Vilan]

Depending on what program you're writing in, you might be able to make macros that bind certain keys to certain accented characters.

Barring that, keep Character Map open in a window beside your work area? Might be faster than alt codes.

Trying to remember what I did when writing French essays in university... think it was just alt codes though. C'est la vie.

 

[crinkles]

i use these sometimes ê ë ï (but not french)

 

[widman]

With windows, open your options for keyboards and set as many as you like, then set (or use the default) keys to switch back and forth.
80% of my writings are in Spanish, I switch back and forth all day. but for most accents, it is just alt ' and then the e or o or whatever. You only need to switch for the ñ or a couple more.

on my MacBook Pro, it is command space to switch, and the keys you hit are a little different.

 

[Pesca]

I hope it is not too late to answer the OP question (don't come that often).

I have an qwerty english keyboard and my regional and Language Option is set to English (United States), so I am probably on the same setup that you.

- To get the è character: [Ctrl]+[`] (up left on the keyboard, left of the 1), then hit the e key.
- To get the é character: [Ctrl]+['] (middle right on the keyboard, right of the , then hit the e key.
- To get the ê character: [Shift]+[Ctrl]+[^] (top part of the 6 key), then hit the e key.

Same thing with other characters: à, ù, û, î, etc...

This is the easiest combinations I found to do them.

Be aware that some softwares(like this forum) won't accept the combinations and you will have to create them on another software (Word for example) and then copy-paste them.

Hope this helps.