Foreign characters have changed. Num Lock codes do not work. Codes do not follow the Ascii hex, for example

Has MS changed in Windows 8 the way we input foreign characters?

Before  in XP, for example, and even in Windows 8 before updating to 8.1, we could type Alt 0161 to insert the initial question mark, now, after guessing and guessing using the Number Keyboard, I found that the only combination that works is Alt 168. The same happens with other Spanish symbols. They do not match Ascii hex.

How can I go back to the original Ascii codes?

Also, it’s been more than 20 years and nothing has improved the way we work in other languages using the English International Keyboard.

Any ideas to solve this problem? The previous codes were very important because when we used different programs, the only way we could input the symbols was the Ascii hex combinations since the programs may have macros for other fuctions, so the macros we created in MS did not work.

Before:

Alt 161 for initial exclamation mark. Now Alt 168

Alt 191 for initial question mark. 241 for ñ. Now Alt 0164.

I am using the International keyboard as before, so I do not know why these codes have changed. 

By the way, before, some macros created to customize symbols work on Word docs, but did not work in Yahoo so we had to use Ascii codes. Now Ascii codes do not work there. But the new codes do. So we reversed the issue.

Entering symbols from the character map is too time consuming and silly when we work on files in a foreign language and we do not want to move to a different keyboard. English International keyboard allows us to use macros or Ascii codes or other codes before. What happened?

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I do not see any change. 


ALT + numeric keypad is used to enter the ASCII Decimal code (not the Hex) for the required symbol and the results of using that facility are exactly as shown on websites such as


http://www.asciitable.com/

Hope this helps,
Doug Robbins - MVP Office Apps & Services (Word)
dougrobbinsmvp@gmail.com
It's time to replace ‘Diversity, Equity & Inclusion’ with ‘Excellence, Opportunity & Civility’ - V Ramaswamy

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In addition to what Doug said, Word has built-in shortcuts for the characters you mention:

 

Alt+Ctrl+? for ¿

Alt+Ctrl+! for ¡

Ctrl+~, n for ñ

Ctrl+~, N for Ñ

Microsoft MVP (Word) since 1999
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Last updated October 5, 2021 Views 395 Applies to: