Dear all!

 

Alternatively you can just open the symbols page in Word and set shortcuts for the small letter umlauts, e.g. CTRL+a for ä, CTRL+u for ü. This will remove the original shortcuts (like CTRL-u = underline), but it works so much faster when typing a German letter in Word. You still have to either use the ALT-method or the symbols page for capital Umlauts, but in general the small letter umlauts are much more common and it speeds up things a lot for me.

 

 

In the newer Word 2007 you proceed like this:

Symbols>more symbols>go on letter>shortcut key>add new shortcut, remove old one if necessary

 

Best wishes

 

Alexander

 

 

 

 

 

On 1 Nov 2009 at 11:53, Alan R Deighton wrote:

 

> Yes, a German keyboard driver (Tastaturbelegung) is the answer and it does work with Vista too. It's a

> nuisance at first if you've learned to touch-type in English. If you're like me and haven't, you'll want to put

> sticky labels on the keys to show where the new signs are and the old ones have moved too, (or get a friend

> in Germany to send you a keyboard) but you soon get used to it. The advantage is that, with the exception of

> the pound sign, the range of signs available directly from the German system is wider, and you don't have to

> switch to anything else to type English.

 

Just to confirm that it does indeed work with Vista, via Control Panel/Regional and Language Options/Keyboards and Languages, adding German to English. It's easy enough to locate the German characters, but instead of trying to remember where the English ones have gone I find it easier to toggle 

between the two keyboards -- the default is (left) Alt+Shift.

 

Howard Gaskill