How to fix your keyboard’s weird symbols
You’re typing away on your computer like you do every day, but all of a sudden your keyboard is on its secondary set of characters (and your “?” is now “È”). What to do?
OK, so this happens at our house all the time, whether it’s me or my wife, Kellie.
Every other day or so we’ll be typing along on the computer keyboard and and you go to use the quote key (“) and it’s “ or È. Huh?
Or when you press the question mark (?), it shows up as É on the screen.
Accidentally, you’ve activated the second set of characters on your keyboard — perhaps another language — and you don’t know how to get it back to normal.
Sound familiar?
Here’s a trick that’s worked for us:
Simply hold down the CTRL key with your thumb and tap the SHIFT key at the same time.
Voila, it works, eh?
This is probably what you did to get you in this mess to begin with.
You may need to do this twice if your computer is set up for three different character profiles.
But it’ll work.
You’re welcome!
Thank You so Much!!! This has been driving me crazy!! Next time this happens I will try this for sure.
You have my undying gratitude! I have a new computer, keyboard, mouse etc. and I have encountered this problem in my email only. When I do a word document it doesn’t happen. This has been driving my stark raving mad. My husband was convinced it was my Incredimail program but alas it was just my sloppy keyboarding!
Really appreciate something that works!
AWESOME!! Thanks! I have done this so many times and feel like a complete idiot when I can’t correct it.
Thank you and finally some help. I had this problem before and was pressing every key and hoping. Then all of a sudden it works but didn’t know what I did to correct it. Thax for posting this.
Sweet….thanks so much! I thought I was losing my mind.
I speak and write in both English and French and my computer has both keyboards set up in Windows XP. I use left SHIFT + ALT to switch between them. There used to be an icon on the tool tray that indicated which one was active, but it has disappeared and I don’t know how to display it.
Also, Outlook Express spellchecks in French only and I can’t change it to English (the language I use most)or add English as an option.
How can I fix these problems?
To change the language in Outlook Express, click on Tools, Options, Spelling and then scroll down to language required.
Thanks for your suggestion, but I have tried that in the past. There is a drop-down box as you described, but there is only 1 selection in the list [French (France)].
There is also a button to edit the custom dictionary, but no button that allows the selection/installation of more languages.
My computer (a Dell laptop) is 3 or 4 years old and I can’t find the system disks to do a re-install or to add features.
Thanks! It’s been soooooooooooo frustrating and could never figure out what I did to correct the problem. jkjjl222ééééééé////// Yep – it works!!
This is great, can’t tell you how happy I am. Thanks.
I had this on my Canadian HP – nothing in their docs, their help desk had me reinstall the keyboard drivers and everything thinking it was a computer problem. I found it only happened in the running app when I hit that key and could “fix” it by closeing the app and restarting it. A while googling later I finally spotted an article somewhere that told me that on my HP I had to use ctrl and press shift twice.
The only addition I would make to the above is that sometimes I had to switch the ctrl key so if one did not work the other did, which I am guessing is down to which ctrl key you switched it on with.
Thanks Sooo much!! This always happened to me when I was in a messenger program and I wouldn’t know how to get out of it. I tried looking on the internet for solutions but nothing helpful or relevant came up.
You may have given me one of the greatest (and simplest) answer to a most annoying problem I have had for years now! THANK YOU for the early Christmas gift!!!
Incredible that HP and their dealers have allowed their customers to suffer this continuing massive frustration with no notification or offered correction of their keyboard design faults. One other key that confounds me is the Caps Lock. On the IBM k/b the upper surface of the Caps Lock key is shortened to match that of the Tab key above it. On HP’s k/b, the Caps Lock is perilously close to the ‘A’ – almost every time I pound on ‘A a’, I also find I’ve moved from one case to the other and I’ve typed half a line or more before I realize it.
Your readers shud not be blaming themselves for misplaced ‘weird symbols’, or wrong ‘case loads’; they shud vent their wrath and disappointment on HP.
Many thanks to you, Marc, for bringing these k/b design and manufacturing goofs to the fore – shud we now expect a formal word from HP? BH.
This is hardly a design flaw.
Language settings are clearly detailed in Windows Help. “F1″ does wonders.
The world doesn’t revolve around North America and many other regions need ways to input their alphabet. It would be incredibly tedious to have to create different keyboards and software installations supporting different input methods for countries with multiple languages (e.g. Quebec & the rest of Canada).
If you’re not going to use the French keyboard, go into Control Panel -> Regional Settings -> Keyboards & Languages -> Change Keyboards: Remove all other keyboards besides “English US”
http://www.pc-help-online.co.uk/images/library/keyboard9.jpg
Thanks for letting people know that there are many more languages in the world than plain old English, and that many of them use diacriticals that are unfamiliar to us. No one else seemed to understand what the point was of the (sic) wierd symbols.
You seem to be fluent in the Windows operating system so maybe you can help me with something I can’t find in the Help file (often this involves asking the right question).
My problem involves getting Outlook Express to spellcheck in English. I have gone into Control Panel|Date, Time, Language and Regional Options|Regional and Language Options|Languages|Details.
I have the following languages and keyboards: English (United States) and the US keyboard (system default) along with French (Canada) and the Canadian Multilingual Standard keyboard. I use both of these languages.
Why do neither of these choices appear when I look at the drop-down language list under Outlook Express Tools|Options|Languages? How can I get them to be listed so I can select them?
Regards,
Al
WOW… I can not believe I did not know this little trick …. and for someone who fixes other ppl’s comps on a regular basis…. I felt soooo stupid for not being able to fix this.
Keep sharing and Merry Christmas to all of you!
*** Hopes it doesn’t get too cold this winter ***
thank you soooo much
You are better than ice cream! I’ve never loved someone I’ve never met so much! Thanks!
Aha, so THAT’s what I keep doing to switch between languages when I’m typing!! This laptop (a fairly recent purchase) has a bilingual keyboard and I keep ending up in “Canadian French” or “Canadian Multilingual Standard” instead of “US” but I had no idea what key combo I was accidentally hitting to do that. Thanks for the tip!!
I was so frustrated I actually googled “keyboard has gone weird question mark not there” because I had lost the ability to articulate. This was the first result that came up. And such a simple fix! Thanks!!
I tried ur suggestion and it does not seem to be working. Am I doing it differently
Again – huge thanks – I knew this had to be language / keyboard issue but it was only happening in Outlook. Great that Google search brings up such an effective answer so quickly.
Thanks again,
Blake
Wow this really is an easy fix. I had this happen in Incredimail and it was driving me nuts, I had no question mark and see now?
Thank you