How to type French accents on an English keyboard by using "ALT"

Question

My current laptop is an HP pavilion g6, windows 7 64 bit.

I had many Pcs before, I used the English keyboard on all of them. If i want to type é for example, I would type ALT-130. On my current laptop the ALT functionality doesn't exist, i tried messing around in the control panel but couldn't fix it.

EDIT

• I see no num lock key, that's my keyboard

• I don't want to transform my keyboard to AZERTY, I want to use the standard English QWERTY keyboard.

Solution 1

A small utility, called keyxpat, could help you. You just type the E key and keep it pressed until a metronome gives you some beeps (a few milliseconds). Depending when you release it, you get your é, è or ê. Same for all diacritics.

Disclaimer: I'm the author and I use it in the same situation. I'm a french expat in Montreal with a qwerty keyboard.

Solution 2

Firstly make sure you are using only the Numberpad with the Num-Lock key turned on.

Remember also that some programs don't support ALT key functionality, so it might not be a specific problem with your hardware, but might be an issue with the program you're using if that program has changed. If it doesn't work with [Alt] does it work with [Alt Gr]?

If your keyboard has a [Function] key, try holding down the [Function] key with the [Alt] key and typing the number sequence. For example [Function] [Alt] [130] and see if that works.

As a workaround method, although I'm not suggesting you use this as a permanent solution, you could open the Character Map: Start > All Programs > Accessories > System Tools > Character Map and copy and paste the characters manually

Yet a further alternative workaround, which you could use as a permanent solution, is by using Autohotkey and setting up a hotkey to automatically insert a specific character when you push your hotkey, for example you could bind [Alt] [130] to insert [é] - once you set that up, it will function just as well as your [Alt-130] method you were previously using.

Solution 3

If you are using the US-International layout and the right Alt key will work as AltGr (although it's not marked as such), you should be able to use the dead key feature. On the United Kingdom extended layout I use, the ´ needs the AltGr key but ` does not. US International may be different. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QWERTY#US-International

Comments

[MSalters]

You can add extra keyboard settings in Windows. Don't use French, that's too weird (AZERTY), but US-international should give you 'e = é

[MSalters]

Nope, Alt+numerical keyboard doesn't depend on numlock. It works on a lower level. That's also why you can't use the numbers on the top row. For the same reason, programs don't influence it either. They're being told what key was entered. Reading the keyboard directly stopped with DOS, in Windows the OS needs to send keystrokes to the right window. (except games, of course)

[MSalters]

French keyboard is a bad idea; it's non-QWERTY.

[GNT]

I'll try autohotkey and let you know

[GNT]

great software! can i exclude characters i don't want? for example the most used accent of e is é and è, the other accents are not used that much therefore, can i just tell the program not to use it? This program works better that the alt + numpad keys!

[Nicolas Cadilhac]

You can configure all keys and characters in the supplied config file. You need an editor that supports unicode (UTF-8) editing (word or notepad2 that I'm using will do). That way, it's very easy to remove a character, rearrange the order of appearance of the characters or add a complete new set of key/characters. Even if it's easy, I may implement a visual tool to do that in the future...

[GNT]

cool i love it, when you download it using google chrome, chrome says, it is a potentially harmful application, so you might want to fix that because most users will delete the tool immediately, i scanned it twice just to make sure :) i think you have to fix that issue so chrome won't give warnings

[Nicolas Cadilhac]

Thank you for the information. I didn't know. However, there is not much I can do since Google uses an algorithm that, in this case, judges more the newness of the web site and the fact that it doesn't have incoming references than the zip file itself. I will add a note for Chrome users though.