1. Whirlwind tour of foreign language computing Chris Dillon Faculty Information Support Officer for Arts & Humanities and Laws

2. Overview Accents Other special characters Setting the language Inputting text in other languages Right to left (changing gear) Adding languages and keyboards Printing

3. Overview Browsing E-mail Further information

4. Accents in Word Hold down Ctrl, press the accent, release the keys and press the letter e.g.: Ctrl and ' for an acute accent, e.g. á Ctrl and ` for a grave accent, e.g. à Ctrl-Shift and ^ for a circumflex, e.g. â Ctrl-Shift and : for an Umlaut/diaeresis, e.g. ä

5. Other special characters In Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook, Insert | Symbol may be used to insert special characters. Any keyboard shortcuts are also indicated. Do not put special characters in file and folder names!

6. Setting the language If the application does not guess the language correctly (see the Status bar), set it by going to Tools | Language | Set Language. To run a spell-check: Click on Tools | Spelling and Grammar. Ensure that the selected dictionary language is correct.

7. Displaying the Language bar If the Language bar is not displayed, go to: Start | Settings | Control Panel | Regional Options | Input Locales | Change Language Select Show the Language bar on the desktop.

8. Inputting text in other languages Click the Input Locale icon. The Language Bar has more options — right-click the Input Locale icon to display it. To see your keyboard layout, click on Start | Programs | Office Applications | Microsoft Office Tools | Microsoft Visual Keyboard.

9. Farsi Microsoft Visual Keyboard

10. Right-to-left scripts (changing gear) You need to click an icon on your Word toolbar to tell Word to input scripts such as Arabic, Farsi, Hebrew and Urdu from right-to-left. If you do not already have the icons, go to Tools | Customise and click the Commands tab. Drag the Right-to-Left and Left-to-Right icons from Format onto your toolbar.

11. Adding languages and keyboards Click the small triangle on the left of the Language Bar and click Settings. Click Add to add languages and keyboards to the list. You may also use Remove to get rid of any languages you do not require.

12. Trouble printing? Try a PostScript printer driver! They often have PS in the name.

13. WWW word soup? If Internet Explorer does not display non-Roman documents correctly: Click View | Encoding and choose the appropriate language and text direction. You may need to click More to find the language you need.

14. E-mail Use Thunderbird, Outlook, Gmail, Hotmail, or Yahoo Mail etc. Eudora and UCL Webmail do not support e-mail in non-Western character sets.

15. Further information www.ucl.ac.uk/is/languages