Typing Accents on my Windows 7 Laptop

This was a big one for me. All the key commands I knew from Windows XP did not work on my laptop, and being a French teacher, I have to be able to type accents! It was easy enough to find key commands that would work in the Office suite, but that still left out anything web-based, because they did not work in a browser. So email, blogging, social networking - I couldn't type my French words! And who had time to figure all this out?!!?

Well, I finally made the time, so I'm sharing what I found here. Maybe it will help someone.

First, you have to enable the international version of the keyboard. That part scared me and I had to read up about it. Anyone who has ever typed on a keyboard in Europe knows what I mean! I didn't want to end up with all my keys scrambled. But you're just adding an option, and it's a US International keyboard, so it's just adding, not scrambling. Whew! Here's how you do that part - Adding the US - International Keyboard in Windows 7.

It will add a little keyboard icon to your taskbar. Click on this keyboard to expand the options and you can choose the US - International (or go back to plain US) any time.

Now, when you're typing anywhere - in any application, or in a browser, you just have to enable your international keyboard. Once you've done that, the key commands are easy! Here they are:



Note that you don't hold down the first key. Type one, then the other. Hope this helps someone.

34 Free Productivity Tools that will Help You Eliminate Expensive Software

This article is flying around Twitter. So I thought I'd share it here.

34 Free Productivity Tools that will Help You Eliminate Expensive Software.

Among them are some old favorites and some new ones on the scene. Hope you gain something from it! I did.