Fada access for Steve

Steve,
Just a quick change in your settings and the fadas are at your fingertips. Bob Burke (in Seattle) gave me this info years ago, táim ana bhuíoch díot a Bhob. I think I was on Win 98 at the time and I’ve adjusted the settings on every machine since then with no probs.

On XP
Start/Control Panel/Regional and Language Options/Language Tab/Details/Default Input Language…set this to English(us)-International/Installed services….Keyboard-United States -International.

Now any time you need a fada hit the ‘ key first. (single quote, single inverted comma) á é í ó ú . Á, É.

Soon you will not need to think about it at all.
for some odd reason I need to use the keystoke system, which you mentioned, for Í, Ó, Ú. Rarely enough, buíochas le Dia. See details below for those.

Should you actually need the single quote character just hit it and then the space bar and it will pop up.

Keystroke System

All sorts of characters may be accessed through the character map, this is the keystroke code system you mentioned.

Start/Programs/Accessories/System tools/Character map.

Select any character you need and the keystroke code will pop up bottom right.

For à, the keystroke is alt +0224.

This means keep the alt key down with the left hand and type in 0224 on the keypad on the right. ( not using the numbers across the top of the keyboard)

The character map codes are handy but I would never use that system for writing in Irish, (apart from I, O, U as so far I have no other option,.......there's no escaping some tricky characters) I would go out of my mind after the first sentence or two with all that coding and would never write a thing.
Mush easier to just adjust the keyboard settings.

Others may be able to enlighten us with their methods?
I’d like to solve the I O U thing, though at this stage I don’t need to think before typing alt +0211.