Create a Spanish Keyboard in MS Word
Open Word program.
click “insert”
click “symbol”
highlight (point and left click) inverted exclamation mark
click “shortcut key”
type “alt” and 1 simultaneously
click “assign”
click “close”
highlight inverted question mark
click “shortcut key”
type “alt” and / simultaneously
click “assign”
click “close”
scroll down to accented “a” and highlight
click “shortcut key”
type “ctrl” and “a” simultaneously
click “assign”
click “close”
scroll down to accented “e” and highlight
click “shortcut key”
type “ctrl” and “e” simultaneously
click “assign”
click “close”
scroll down to accented “i” and highlight
click “shortcut key”
type “ctrl” and “i” simultaneously
click “assign”
click “close”
scroll down to accented “o” and highlight
click “shortcut key”
type “ctrl” and “o” simultaneously
click “assign”
click “close”
scroll down to accented “u” and highlight
click “shortcut key”
type “ctrl” and “u” simultaneously
click “assign”
click “close”
scroll over to “u” with umlaut (two dots over letter) and highlight
click “shortcut key”
type “alt” and “u” simultaneously
click “assign”
click “close”
scroll up to “n” with tilde and highlight
click “shortcut key”
type “ctrl” and “n” simultaneously
click “assign”
click “close”
This will complete the basic keyboard symbols that you need for Spanish. There are a few others that are used from time to time which you can add if you wish, such as the superscripted abbreviations used for ordinal numbers, etc. but I am not including them here since they aren’t critical and I don’t want to over-complicate this process.
Now that you have assigned new keystroke combinations to this “keyboard” or template for Word, click “close” to close the “symbol” window.
You will now be back to the blank document. You can test the combinations at this time if you wish. Hold down the “alt” key and simultaneously type the numeral 1 to get the inverted exclamation mark. The “alt” /(slash) combination will give you the inverted question mark. The “alt” with the letter “u” will give you the “u” with dierisis (umlaut-two small dots over the letter). The “ctrl” key used simultaneously with the vowels will give you the accented letters (a,e,i,o,u). The “ctrl” key used with “n” will give you the “n” with the tilde.
To save this “keyboard” template so that it is available for future documents you will need to save it.
click “file”
click “save as”
You will see the “save as” window open
At the bottom there is a line for you to give this template a “file name”
type “Spanish Keyboard”
Under this line is another which is labeled “save as type”
scroll down to “document template”
click “save”
To use this keyboard in future documents, open the Word program, then type “file”, then “new”. On the right side of the screen you will see some choices. Under “new from template”, choose “Spanish Keyboard”. ONCE YOU HAVE STARTED A NEW DOCUMENT FROM THIS TEMPLATE, CLICK “SAVE AS” AND GIVE YOUR DOCUMENT A NEW NAME SO THAT YOU DON’T OVERWRITE THE SPANISH KEYBOARD TEMPLATE FILE.
Proceed to type your document, using the “ctrl” and “alt” keys as described above to modify the alphabet letters and punctuation marks which you will need to type in Spanish.