How do you do French accents on a laptop?

Okay I need a way to type french accents on my words for the programs open-office writer and Microsoft Word. Now I know the first thing your going to say for Microsoft word is to go to insert and go to symbols. But I lack a symbol button. I don't want to permanently change my keyboard to french but I just need a way to shortcut to these accents. Again I don't want to permanently change all my numbers to symbols or something like that, I just want shortcuts that will work on my computer. Thanks in advice!How do you do French accents on a laptop?
Laptops generally have a Fn key which allow you to emulate a Numeric Keypad on a laptop. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fn_key . If not, you should read the documentation that came with your laptop to see how it emulates a numeric keypad.



On a PC, generally speaking, you make sure the Num Lock is on, by pressing down the upper-rightmost key until the indicator light is on. Then you hold down the left Alt key, type a number on the Numeric Keypad from 0 to 255, and then allow the left Alt key to rise. To use a laptop, you would often have to press Fn either before or while you were pressing the number keys.



If you include a 0 before each number, you will get the corresponding character from you current 8-bit Windows character set. Otherwise you will get the corresponding character from your current DOS character set. If the DOS Code Page is 470, some capital accented French characters will be missing, If it is Code Page 850, Then French characters 艙 and 艗 will still be missing. So I suggest you get used to using the leading 0 which will provide the Windows Western European Character set.



You might also try http://allchars.zwolnet.com/ for AllChars.exe which provides a more intuitive approach. I have been using this for about fifteen years with no problems, including under Windows Vista. Ctrl O E produces 艗, Crl ' e produces 茅, Ctrl ` a produces 脿, Ctrl ^ O produces 脭 and so forth. You press the Ctrl before the other keys, not while you are pressing them, so that it does not interfere with regular Ctrl key usage.How do you do French accents on a laptop?
Hold Alt Gr, and press the letter you want an accent with.

It works. I never said WITH the spacebar, just ';Alt Gr next to the spacebar';

茅 谩 煤 铆 贸 - see?