Changing Keyboard Languages

This pages contains instructions on how to add and change your keyboard input to foreign languages.

Adding Languages

In order to change your keyboard input to another language you first need to add the required language to your computer.

• Go to Settings
• Then advanced settings
• Select Language and input
• Click Language
  • Click Add Languages
• Search and check the box of the language(s) you'd like to add
• Click add

Adding Languages to the Keyboard Input Methods

Once you have added the languages you can now enable your keyboard to use them as inputs to type with

• Go to Settings
• Then Advanced Settings
• Select Language and Input
• Click Input Method
  • Click Manage Input Methods
• Select the Language(s) you need to type with
• Hit the back button and make sure Show input options on the shelf is turned on. This will add a shortcut to change keyboard inputs for future use

Enable Accessibility Options for On Screen Keyboards

Using the foreign language keyboard layout may not be intuitive to use to begin with, enabling the onscreen keyboard through the accessibility features will help you learn the layout.

• Go to Settings
• Advanced Settings
• Accessibility
• Make sure the Always show accessibility options in the system menu is enabled
  • Once this is on you can now more easily access the on screen keyboard and other accessibility options from the system menu in the lower right corner of the desktop
• Click Manage accessibility features
• Scroll to the Keyboard and text input section
  • make sure enable on-screen keyboard is turned on

You should now see a keyboard icon next to the keyboard input icon and sign out button in the lower right side of the shelf where you can select the language you'd like to type in and display the on screen keyboard to help with locating keys on the foreign layout

Video Tutorial

Additional Notes

• Foreign language keyboard layouts can be quite different than US layouts if you want a similar keyboard layout for easy typing with some access to generally used accented letters its recommend you use the International keyboard layout. In that layout the accented letters are typed using the right alt key.