if you’re new to Chromebooks and you’re a bit of a world traveler or you regularly communicate in a language that uses accents, such as French or Spanish, you will need to know how to type them using your Chromebook.
It’s possible to switch between keyboard layouts on a Chromebook, and it’s quite easy. Go to Chrome Settings by clicking on the three horizontal bars in the Chrome toolbar or your user icon in the system tray in the bottom right of your screen, then choosing “Settings”. In the Device menu (or further down in the “Languages” menu), choose “Keyboard Settings” and “Change Language and Input Settings”. Click “Add”, then choose the language you need.
Once you have set up the languages and keyboard layouts you prefer, you can click on the bottom-right system tray in order to switch between them. You can also move between your preferred keyboard layouts by using Alt-Shift to switch between your keyboard layouts or by using Ctrl-Space to go to your last layout. A notification will pop up the first time you do this, then it will simply change between them without a notification for some time after that. Note that the documentation says that you will cycle between keyboards when you use Alt-Shift, but if you use AltGr-Shift (AltGr is the Alt button on the right) it will take you from US to INTL.
The option of switching between language-specific keyboards is great if you can touch type in both keyboard layouts. Not so much if you can only touch type in QWERTY, yet still want to use accents.
This will require the use of the US extended keyboard, so you’ll need to go into settings as detailed above and add the US extended keyboard or the US international keyboard, depending on your accent needs. You can use the shortcuts mentioned previously to switch between layouts. You’ll see INTL in the toolbar when you’re using the US International keyboard and EXTD when you’re using the US Extended keyboard.
Once you’re using the US Extended or US International keyboard, accents can be entered using their shortcut keys, such as AltGr-e for an accent over your e like this: é. Use the tips below to find shortcuts and view your keyboard layout. As you can see, using AltGr-Shift to switch to the INTL keyboard, then AltGr-Letter and Ctrl-Space afterwards is pretty quick to use once you get going.
It’s all very well to use a foreign or International keyboard, but if you don’t know which shortcuts to use you are still stuck. By typing Ctrl-Alt-/ you can get the current keyboard layout to be shown to you. This will also remind you that you can hold Ctrl and see what the shortcuts corresponding to Ctrl are and the same goes for Alt, Shift and Search. However, it doesn’t show you what the shortcuts are for AltGr, which is generally the way to do accents. (Come on Google, make it work!) If you want a list of all of the characters you can make using AltGr in the US International layout, see Wikipedia. It also shows details of the UK and Ireland layouts, but not the US Extended layout, which is different to the International layout slightly.
One of the main differences between the US Extended layout and the US International layout is in punctuation. With the International layout, you can type ‘ followed by e and get é. If you want to type ‘ you need to press the key and then use the space bar. This can get really annoying if you’re not typing accents regularly, as it occurs for other punctuation keys too.
In US International:
The ` key (left of the 1) plus the letter will make an accent grave, e.g è, ù, à.
The ‘ key (left of the enter key) plus the letter will make an accute accent, or a cédille if you type a c, e.g. á, é, ç.
The ^ key (Shift-6) plus a letter will make a circonflex, e.g. û, ê.
The ” key plus a letter will make a tréma/umlaut, e.g. ü, ö.
You can use the Unicode notation of any character to get it to show up in your writing. To do this, type Ctrl-Shift-U, then stop pressing the u. You’ll see an underlined u appear, which means you’re ready to type in the Unicode of the character. Type the numbers and letters (no caps needed) and then press space and it will appear. For instance, Ctrl-Shift-U-00C0 gives you À (A Grave). See Wikipedia for the full Unicode character list.
For computers using Windows 7, Vista or XP:
Click on Start, then Control Panel.
Double click on the : “Regional and Language Options” icon, then single click on the "Languages" tab (the second tab).
Under “Text Services and Input Languages,” click on “Details” button.
To install the US-International keyboard layout (which you only need to do once): On the “Settings” tab under “Installed Services,” click on Keyboard then on the “Add” button.
In the next dialog window, “Input Language” should say “English (United States).” Check “Keyboard layout/IME” and select “United States-International” from the drop-down menu. Click “OK.”
To make the US-International keyboard layout your default keyboard layout, on the same “Settings” tab, under “Default Input Language” select “English (United States) – United States – International” from the drop-down menu. Click OK to close “Text Services and Input Languages.”
Then click OK to close “Regional and Language Options” and return to the Control Panel window.
Close the Control Panel window.
or: http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;306560
Here is a quick list of the keystrokes for typing accents on this keyboard. A plus (+) means to continue holding down the previous key while striking the next key. A comma (,) means to let go of the previous key prior to striking the next key.
For more information about this layout, see the Microsoft Website:
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;306560
* Some key combinations will not work within Microsoft Word because of the standard keyboard shortcuts that Word employs. Below is a list of Word shortcut keys that you might want to disable in order to type some European characters
Disabling Word Shortcut Keys:
In Word, open the Tools menu > Customize
Click on the button at the bottom that says Keyboard
Highlight the Category and Command that you want to disable
Under the Current Keys box, highlight the conflicting shortcut key and then click the Remove button at the bottom of the screen.
Close all windows when you are finished
1) In order to type ß, disable the command called DocSplit in the Windows & Help category.
2) To type ¡, disable the command called ApplyHeading1 in the Format category.
3) To type ø, disabling the ListBullet does not work. The work around that I found was to assign the appropriate keystroke to the ø character. You can do this by going to the Insert menu > Symbol, then highlight the ø character in the table and click on the Shortcut Key button. Here you can assign a shortcut key combination much the same way you removed it from the other locations.
Note: The minor disadvantage of the international keyboard is that when you want to type the "helping" character (e.g., single or double quotes) by itself rather than above a vowel, you have to type the symbol then hit the space bar. For example, to type c'est, type c then ' then hit the spacebar then type e s t. It takes a little while to get used to typing that extra space when you just want to type ' or "