# German keyboard



## driFDer

Guten Tag!  I'll start by first introducing myself.  I stumbled on this forum while in the quest of learning the German language, and started reading through some answers that were posted in this forum.  I was very impressed on the level of understanding, compassion, and courtesy that everyone here seems to share.  So, I decided to sign up.  I've been teaching myself German for about a year now, and everything is going good thus far.  I'm to the point now that, the only thing I need is a larger vocabulary, and tons of practice.  I wish I would have found this forum a year ago when I had all my grammar questions.  Anyways, enough yapping.  My question to all of you lovely people is that, I do from time to time, talk to people from native German speaking countries, but I have to plug all my text into a translator so I can have all the umlauts and the "es-tset" available to me. Then I just "copy" and "paste" the text where I need it.   Is there a program or a system setting I can use/change to be able to have umlauts and such at my disposal?  Thank you!

Auf Wiederhoren!
-Justin


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## FloVi

Welcome aboard.

In order to answer your question, it would be very useful to know something about your computer system.


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## driFDer

Entschuldigung...I saw the sticky's up on top of the forum page but I assumed they were just links to websites.  Then I actually scrolled down all the way and the quick-keys are posted there.  Man I feel stupid now.  Again my apologies.  Wow! It didn't take me long to make a newbie mistake now did it?! hahaha... Danke!
-Justin


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## Tresley

Hello DriFDer,

Welcome to the forum.

I use these codes on my British keyboard to produce German accents:

Press Alt + the following numbers on the number pad on the right of the keyboard (num lock on):

Ä = 0196
ä = 0228
Ë = 0203
ë = 0235
Ï = 0207
ï = 0239
Ö = 0214
ö = 0246
Ü = 0220
ü = 0252
ß = 0223

I hope this works on your American keyboard.


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## Tresley

driFDer said:
			
		

> Thank you tresley! It works! Ä ä Ë ë ï ß Can you see them?


 
YAY!!!

I keep a list next to my keyboard.  I suggest you do the same.

Sehr gut!


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## Jana337

I added something useful to the resources sticky; let me bring your attention to it:


> A writing tool: You can click on an umlauted letter or ß whenever you need them.


 I find it way more practical than the Alt shortcuts.

But if I were you, I would install the German keyboard. It takes less than 3 minutes, and you can easily toggle between various layouts using Alt + Shift.  Here's how to do it (for Russian, but it works for any language).

Welcome, and I am looking forward to your active participation! 

Jana


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## Kajjo

gaer said:
			
		

> I'm wondering if I'm the only person who deals with the "missing characters" problem with a macro program?
> 
> Gaer


Word can do automatic replacement with the AutoCorrection (English name?) function. I define "nn" as Spanish n and Word replaces it while I type fluently without further thinking. Cute and easy and no effort at all.

Kajjo


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## gaer

Kajjo said:
			
		

> Word can do automatic replacement with the AutoCorrection (English name?) function. I define "nn" as Spanish n and Word replaces it while I type fluently without further thinking. Cute and easy and no effort at all.
> 
> Kajjo


I don't like Word for simple things because it is so full of formatting. In fact, I often have to paste things into Notepad to strip coding that conflicts with this window when I write off-line.

I have defined alt s for ß, alt u for ü, etc. I once used the German keyboard map for typing in German, and except for the switch of "z" and "y" it was quite easy, but when I wanted to use more than one language at the same time, it was troublesome.

For instance, if I want to type a German word and déjà vu in the same sentence, I don't want to have to switch from English to German to French. 

Gaer


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