[Micronet] Entering special characters on an ACER Spanish keyboard

[Mike Friedman]

Hi,

My sister-in-law has an ACER laptop with a Spanish keyboard and she's having trouble entering certain fairly common special characters such as the at-sign, tilde, pound sign, backslash, etc..  Does anyone out there know how to obtain this information?  This computer is a cheap laptop with no numeric keypad, so it doesn't seem possible even to enter the ASCII codes (i.e., using the Alt key).  The computer is running Windows 7, Home Edition.

Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks.

Mike


 
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[William]

Have you tried changing the keyboard settings in the control panel, regional and language settings, Keyboards and Languages?

If that doesn't help, maybe you could try this:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keyboard_layout#Spanish_.28Spain.29.2C_aka_Spanish_.28International_sort.29

On 11/22/2011 4:22 PM, Mike Friedman wrote:

Hi,

My sister-in-law has an ACER laptop with a Spanish keyboard and she's having trouble entering certain fairly common special characters such as the at-sign, tilde, pound sign, backslash, etc..  Does anyone out there know how to obtain this information?  This computer is a cheap laptop with no numeric keypad, so it doesn't seem possible even to enter the ASCII codes (i.e., using the Alt key).  The computer is running Windows 7, Home Edition.

Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks.

Mike

 
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[Gary Lum]

You can use the  character map  app as well. Start Menu/accessories/system tools

On 11/22/2011 4:36 PM, William wrote:

Have you tried changing the keyboard settings in the control panel, regional and language settings, Keyboards and Languages?

If that doesn't help, maybe you could try this:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keyboard_layout#Spanish_.28Spain.29.2C_aka_Spanish_.28International_sort.29

On 11/22/2011 4:22 PM, Mike Friedman wrote:

Hi,

My sister-in-law has an ACER laptop with a Spanish keyboard and she's having trouble entering certain fairly common special characters such as the at-sign, tilde, pound sign, backslash, etc..  Does anyone out there know how to obtain this information?  This computer is a cheap laptop with no numeric keypad, so it doesn't seem possible even to enter the ASCII codes (i.e., using the Alt key).  The computer is running Windows 7, Home Edition.

Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks.

Mike

 
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[David Friedman]

Problem solved. 

The keyboard in question belongs to my wife.  I tried various solutions suggested at internet discussion groups,
including changing the control panel regional and language settings.  None worked. 

Finally I experimented by holding down the AltGr key and pressing all the other keys on the keyboard in
succession.  I did this in Wordpad so I could see the resulting characters. This produced some useful special
characters:

@            AltGr + q
~             AltGr + *
\              AltGr + ?
#             Shift   + 3

Maybe there's some logical consistency in this keyboard, but it's certainly not intuitive.  Sometimes the shift
key activates the symbol above the main character on a key.  In other cases (as with the #) it activates the
symbol to the right of the main character.  There's nothing on the q, *, ? keys to hint that they might map to
@, ~, \ via the AltGr key.

By the way, I disagree with Mike that this is a "cheap laptop."  It's true that my wife got a discount by buying
it when she was in Panama (her original homeland), but if we factor in the time spent on keyboard idiocy,
it wasn't such a bargain after all. 

Thanks to those who offered their help.

-- Dave

On 11/22/2011 4:55 PM, Gary Lum wrote:

You can use the  character map  app as well. Start Menu/accessories/system tools

On 11/22/2011 4:36 PM, William wrote:

Have you tried changing the keyboard settings in the control panel, regional and language settings, Keyboards and Languages?

If that doesn't help, maybe you could try this:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keyboard_layout#Spanish_.28Spain.29.2C_aka_Spanish_.28International_sort.29

On 11/22/2011 4:22 PM, Mike Friedman wrote:

Hi,

My sister-in-law has an ACER laptop with a Spanish keyboard and she's having trouble entering certain fairly common special characters such as the at-sign, tilde, pound sign, backslash, etc..  Does anyone out there know how to obtain this information?  This computer is a cheap laptop with no numeric keypad, so it doesn't seem possible even to enter the ASCII codes (i.e., using the Alt key).  The computer is running Windows 7, Home Edition.

Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks.

Mike

 
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[William]

So, then it was the Latin America Spanish Layout instead: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keyboard_layout#Spanish_.28Latin_America.29

The Blue symbols are linked to the blue AltGr key.

On 11/22/2011 8:46 PM, David Friedman wrote:

Problem solved. 

The keyboard in question belongs to my wife.  I tried various solutions suggested at internet discussion groups,
including changing the control panel regional and language settings.  None worked. 

Finally I experimented by holding down the AltGr key and pressing all the other keys on the keyboard in
succession.  I did this in Wordpad so I could see the resulting characters. This produced some useful special
characters:

@            AltGr + q
~             AltGr + *
\              AltGr + ?
#             Shift   + 3

Maybe there's some logical consistency in this keyboard, but it's certainly not intuitive.  Sometimes the shift
key activates the symbol above the main character on a key.  In other cases (as with the #) it activates the
symbol to the right of the main character.  There's nothing on the q, *, ? keys to hint that they might map to
@, ~, \ via the AltGr key.

By the way, I disagree with Mike that this is a "cheap laptop."  It's true that my wife got a discount by buying
it when she was in Panama (her original homeland), but if we factor in the time spent on keyboard idiocy,
it wasn't such a bargain after all. 

Thanks to those who offered their help.

-- Dave

On 11/22/2011 4:55 PM, Gary Lum wrote:

You can use the  character map  app as well. Start Menu/accessories/system tools

On 11/22/2011 4:36 PM, William wrote:

Have you tried changing the keyboard settings in the control panel, regional and language settings, Keyboards and Languages?

If that doesn't help, maybe you could try this:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keyboard_layout#Spanish_.28Spain.29.2C_aka_Spanish_.28International_sort.29

On 11/22/2011 4:22 PM, Mike Friedman wrote:

Hi,

My sister-in-law has an ACER laptop with a Spanish keyboard and she's having trouble entering certain fairly common special characters such as the at-sign, tilde, pound sign, backslash, etc..  Does anyone out there know how to obtain this information?  This computer is a cheap laptop with no numeric keypad, so it doesn't seem possible even to enter the ASCII codes (i.e., using the Alt key).  The computer is running Windows 7, Home Edition.

Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks.

Mike

 
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