Does anyone know how to make accented letters on a windows laptop (áíóúñ). I can make them on a desktop using alt+160-164 pad but can’t seem to do this on a laptop since I don’t have a number pad, only the numbers across the top. Any suggestions?
On most laptops I’ve seen, it’s possible to activate a “hidden” notepad by pressing the Fn-button and NumLock (on mine, all those options are written in blue), then the “number pad” numbers are placed on M, J, K, L, U, I, O, 7, 8 and 9. Maybe your laptop is configured in a similar way.
Using Alt+ numbers seems inefficient to me.
Can you change your laptop’s keyboard setting to English US, International with Dead Keys?
If so, then you can type an accented vowel by holding down the Right Alt key and at the same time typing the vowel: say, Right Alt + a = á. And in this setting, Right Alt+n gives ñ. This setup gives other kinds of accents, too, such as umlauted ö, but for Spanish I don’t think you’ll need them.
With this keyboard setting, you don’t need to learn a new keyboard arrangement, but it does come with a slight inconvenience. To type an apostrophe, you have to type the apostrophe key and then press the space bar (but not at the same time) to make the apostrophe appear. But you can always switch the keyboard back to plain old English if you want when you’re done with Spanish.
Hope this helps.
Thank you for your suggestions. I found that setting up an keyboard from the target language country was what worked best for me. Since I live in the US and I’m learning Spanish the keyboard is not that different and easy to get used to. the ñ = ; and the accents are [ a = á. Not to mention switching between the keyboard is simple the alt + shift. I am able to quickly switch between the US and Mexican keyboards.
Ah. Glad you found a way that works well for you. Suerte.