Typing accent marks made easy - caps lock key plus a = á; caps lock key plus n =ñ and so on.
I found this great little free program on a page of spanish links suggested by J_G_Duff (thank you very much!).
It is a small download that allows you to type all the letters with spanish accents just by holding down the 'caps lock' key in addition to a letter. For example, if you hold the 'caps lock' key down and press e at the same time, you will be typing an é.
It's wonderful, there is no need to copy and paste anymore and you don't have to remember any number codes. It works for capital letters also, you just hold down the 'shift' key plus the letter instead of the 'caps lock' key.
The download is certified virus free by Jotti, so you can be assured it's safe. The programmer also has a download for German accents as well.
I added mine as a new toolbar on my Taskbar so that I can turn it on and off with just a click.
I'm using it now and it saves a lot of time, especially when you are writing spanish lessons.
Download it here.
Cheers!
7 Answers
This is just a "band-aid" approach. What will you do when you need punctuation marks, etc? It´s much better to just use a complete Spanish keyboard via "regional languages" through the control panel and have done with it. If you are serious about learning the language, sooner or later you´ll have to do this anyway.
I use this! I have been for about a month now. It's so much easier than the international keyboard. When I turn that on, all my punctuation and such is in different places! But this, áéíóú, es el más fácil.
Or you could turn on the international keyboard and use alt + a,e,i,o,u. Also including various other characters.
Hi Margherite. JulianChivi is right. This is a “band-aid” approach. While no one can fault you or anyone else for trying what you think works for you (for now, anyway!), this approach does not address the root problem. It is, again, better to go to the control panel and make the changes in the Regional and Language Options area. And by the way, there are any number of approaches to this quandary out there. I have tried them all, big and small, including the installation of special software. But the fastest, least problematic way is always and only keyboard remapping. With it, you can quickly toggle between a keyboard that (fully) has an English layout (U.S. or wherever) and one that has a Spanish layout (Mexico or wherever). And once it’s done, no fuss no muss. Never again do you need to fiddle with inserting symbols from a pulldown menu or inputting ASCII text or ANSI text extended character set codes or clicking on pictographs. Or learning non-standard hotkey combinations, I might add. Plus, inputting the characters your way is not as fast. Moreover, keyboard remapping is done globally, so it works in whatever environment or software you are in: your browser, any website, an instant message window, a word processor, a spreadsheet, anywhere! Anyone can Google the instructions—which will, of course, vary somewhat depending upon your operating system—but it’s no big deal, and it’s truly the only real solution.
Also, for those of you who type in Spanish on your iPhone or iPad, make sure you add the Spanish keyboard under the international keyboard settings. While it's easy to simply press and hold a letter to get the accented versions to come up as options, if you toggle keyboards, you get autocorrect in the language you're typing in. Muuuuuch easier. I text at least half the time in Spanish and it's a pain to have autocorrect mangle everything you're saying in a different language.
On a mac, you use option-e to get the accent to appear, then type the letter you want to appear under it.
For the tilde, unsurprisingly, option-n, then n: ñÑ
two dots, option-i.
áéíÉñÑî
Punctuation, option-? gets you ¿, option-1 gets you ¡
To prevent accidental activation of CapsLock when typing accents, you must hit the CapsLock key twice in rapid succession to turn CapsLock on and off.
