French characters from English keyboard

[Will]

Following a recommendation on another forum I have been using a handy, free, tool that sits on your computer screen and allows to you to drag accented characters into the document you are typing. It works with most programs etc, including this forum. The following characters are instantly available with the French version - é è à ç â ê ë î ï ô û ù ü, in upper and lower case. You can find it at http://www.lexicool.com/lexibar_french_special_keyboard_characters.asp. Other languages are available.

There are many other ways of getting these characters, of course, but this is the neatest I have yet found.

[Benjamin]

Will

That's a 5 étoiles tool. I have a French purchased QWERTY keyboard which does some strange things on occassions.

The use of Alt/Ctrl and then a series of numbers to bring up French accented characters doesn't work on my keyboard so this tool is a great help.

No more excuses for not using the correct accent in the future.

Benjamin

[Cat]

Wow thanks Will.

As you say, there are other ways of accessing accented characters, but this is by far the easiest!

Gîte, hôtel, été and français are now as easy as pie to type [:)]

 

[bryansmith]

Hi Will

thaks very much for this very useful link. One small problem the toolbar vanishes when I turn off the computer. Does it have to be loaded each time or is there a way to keep it permenantly?

thanks once again

[Will]

I don't know why it disappears, that's annoying, I agree. I think that if you just save it to your desktop, you can reactivate it as needed by clicking on the flag icon..

[bryansmith]

Thanks very much - will do that and see what happens

[Cassis]

[quote user="Cat 46"]

As you say, there are other ways of accessing accented characters, but this is by far the easiest!

[/quote]

Not quite the easiest - what about an AZERTY keyboard!

But this sounds great for anyone who does not want to replace their keyboard.  Nice one, Will. [:)]

[Jonzjob]

We have a 'normal' qwerty keyboard and to make it into an azerty one we just press the left 'alt and shift keys together and we have a list of the keys to press on the upper numerical keys for the charactér: But if you qinùt got it then your link is q goodun Zill; sorry Will, I forgot to hit the keys again to put it back...

By the way Will, I've meant to ask before, but is this anything to do with you? It's in Falaise.

[IMG]http://i47.photobucket.com/albums/f180/Jonzjob/WillietheKonkFalaise20012.jpg[/IMG]

Cas, azerty keyboard indeed. Mine's a trype writer as it is![+o(]

[Will]

John, that looks like a little ststue I had erected outside the starter château in Falaise.

I use an AZERTY keyboard in France and QWERTY keyboards in England. I do miss the accents from the French keyboard, and they are particularly awkward to do on a QWERTY laptop, so the character tool is handy.

[Cassis]

Just to bring some balance to affairs, here is a wee statue of English manufacture:

[img]http://www.tapman.net/photos/London/images/Richard_the_LionHeart.jpg[/img]

[Pads]

Thanks Will just what i needed for my lessons im doing, and I have now saved to desktop as well perfect.[:D]

[mint]

thanks, will.  this is the neatest, dinkiest little tool imaginable and i can't wait to try it out

[Boxxen]

Thanks, Thanks and more Thanks,

 

I have a laptop, that is more difficult to access for the French characters, This is excellent.

Save the toolbar to your workspace, you have to initiate it (Double click) to run it, but it works very well.

I am looking how to save the toolbar into Word, no luck so far, any one with idea's.

 

Boxxen (Alias Jim)

[Benjamin]

If I'm typing a letter in French in Word I just change the language to French and then run the spell checker.

Of course this won't catch at/to and has, so you still need to know a bit of when the accents need applying.

Benjamin

[dylan]

hi i have just found this.

How to type French accents

Press the "alt" key while typing the following numbers on the numberpad on the right of your keyboard. You need to have the "Num Lock" function on

alt +	131	â
	132	ä
	133	à
	130	é
	136	ê
	137	ë
	138	è
	139	ï
	140	î
	129	ü
	150	û
	151	ù
	147	ô
	148	ö
	149	ò
	135	ç
	145	æ

hope this helps

[Wibblywobbly]

Errrr......this is all done for you by Microsoft.

Start>>Programs>>Accessories>>System Tools>>Character Map

You can click, copy and paste, or type the character code at the bottom of the box, or if you are using Word or Wordpad you can drag and drop.

Hope this helps someone!

Cheers

Rob G [:P]

[Cassis]

None of the subsequent tips seem as good as Will's very first post on this thread!

[Will]

Nice of you to say so, dear old sausage, even though I stressed at the beginning that I'd found it on another forum so can't really claim any credit. Each to their own, I have to type accents a lot and have tried all the other ways mentioned, including the Alt key number combinations (many of which I know off by heart, e.g. Alt 132 is an a with an umlaut, used twice every time I write the name of a certain Finnish diesel engine company) and the character map, which I use a lot for the more obscure characters. All of them are good in their way - I just feel that the Lexibar tool is the neatest solution if you are just typing extra characters in one language, particularly when using a laptop.

[Ecossais]

Bryan / Will,

There’s a couple of things you could try to make the toolbar easier to access.

If you want it available every time you turn your PC on (bearing in mind that it seems to open in the middle of the screen and you will have to move it to the side every time to start up your PC), copy the Lexibar icon on your Windows desktop to the “Startup” menu.

To do this, first right [mouse] click on the Lexibar icon on your desktop and left click “Copy”.  Now right click on the “Start” button in the bottom left corner of your screen and left click on “Open all users”.  Double left click on the “Programs” folder and then again on the “Startup” folder.  Then left click on the “Edit” drop down menu and then “Paste”.

When you now start your PC the Lexibar welcome screen will automatically appear – all you need to do is press the “Enter” key to move on.  (If you first get the Microsoft message about the software being OK to run, untick the “Always ask first…” box).

As an alternative to the above, to make Lexibar faster to launch just when you need it, you can add Lexibar to your “Start” menu, so that it appears with Internet Explorer etc when you click on the “Start” button.

To do this, right [mouse] click on the Lexibar icon on your desktop and choose “Pin to Start Menu”.