Entering accents in French

This is a question that comes up regularly, so it's worth a page to itself

There's a quick and dirty way, and there's the way you need to do it if you type a lot of French.

The quick and dirty way is to hold the ALT key down while tapping a number code on the number pad on the right side of the (standard) keyboard. Here is a page that explains how to do it

But if - like me - you use a notebook computer to work on, that's not so easy - no number pad. Or, if - like me - you type a lot of French, then you need to do the job properly. Here's how.

If you buy a computer in France it comes with a French keyboard

As you can see, you get the accents under the numbers, and many of the letters are in a different place. However, the keyboard has exactly the same number of physical keys, with the same layout.

So if you tell your computer that it has a French keyboard attached, when you press the key Q, you will see the letter A displayed. When you press 2, you will get é.

It takes a little while to learn, but it means that when you go to France you can use a French machine without difficulty !

Here are some notes on finding letters and accents on the French keyboard

A and Q are juxtaposed, as are Z and W

M is ;

The four keys to the right of N give you , ; : ! uppercase ? . / §   confusing at first...

Accents 2=é, 7 = è, 9 = ç, 0 = à.  Press [ followed by e for ê, (other circumflexes are the same)

You occasionally need other accents. Shift + [ then i = ï and  ö and ü work the same way

Here's how to set up your computer to use both English and French keyboard layouts

Go to control panel and click on Regional and Language options

Select the Languages tab

Click on details. This gives you a new dialogue showing your languages and keyboards selected. Click on English (or whatever you use currently) and click Add

Choose French (France) as the language and French as the keyboard

Now you have both French and English available as your languages and keyboard

Finally click on Language Bar and tick Show additional language bar icons in the taskbar as well as Show language bar on the desk top

This shows EN or FR in the 'Tray' to the bottom left of the screen and you can switch between the two. If you're using my vocabulary program ticking toggle kboard will do this for you

Incidentally, Microsoft Word will now switch between the English and French spellcheckers once you have done this

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