If you’re participating in one of the many Spanish learner forums, (Rocket Spanish and Learning Spanish Like Crazy have support forums when you participate in their programs) there will be instances when you will need to type Spanish characters like ñ or accents over the vowels.

Typing Spanish characters on an English keyboard takes a few extra steps. This tutorial on adding Spanish Characters to your keyboard is for Windows XP and I’m pretty sure it’s the same on Vista. Click on the images to enlarge:

  • Click Start, and then click Control Panel.
  • Under Pick a category, click Date, Time, Language, and Regional Options.
  • Under or pick a Control Panel icon, click Regional and Language Options.
  • The Regional and Language Options dialog box appears.

install spanish keyboard

  • On the Languages tab, click Details.

installing spanish keyboard characters

  • The Text Services and Input Languages dialog box appears.
  • Under Installed services, click Add.

installing spanish keyboard characters

  • The Add Input language dialog box appears.
  • In the Input language list, click the language that you want. For example, English (United States).
  • When you use the United States-International keyboard layout, you should also use an English language setting.
  • In the Keyboard layout/IME list, click United States-International, and then click OK.

installing spanish keyboard characters

  • Notice that the Language bar appears on the taskbar. When you position the mouse pointer over it, a ToolTip appears that describes the active keyboard layout. For example, United States-International.
  • Click the Language bar, and then click United States-International on the shortcut menu that appears.
  • The United States-International keyboard layout is selected.

installing spanish keyboard characters

Creating Spanish Extended Characters

Using this keyboard you can create several different special characters from most western European languages. This is how to create the characters for Spanish:

To type the á, type apostrophe and then the letter a. The other characters are just as easy:

á = ‘ + a
é = ‘ + e
í = ‘ + i
ó = ‘ + o
ú = ‘ + u
ñ = ~ + n
ü = ” + u

Spanish special punctuation characters: You need to hold down Right Alt key and the punctuation mark. On most keyboards you need to shift to type a ! or ?. For the Spanish ¡ and ¿ you only need to hold the Alt key then type the un-shifted ? or !. If you use the Left Alt key, it won’t work.

¡ = Alt (hold down) + !
¿ = Alt (hold down) + ?

That’s all there is to it. Once your International keyboard is installed, it’s easy to type the characters you need.