Is there not a single alt key code combination for adding accents to Spanish characters?

Question

So I need to write occasionally in Spanish. I was using a Spanish keyboard and this had a specific accent key which when pressed appeared to do nothing. However if you followed that key stroke by pressing e, u, a etc then the letter just typed would appear as a single accented version of the same character!

Now I don't have access to this keyboard so am stuck on a keyboard within the ability to quickly write letters using the accents.

I know I could use a virtual keyboard or learn all the alt+xxx key combinations for individual accented letters but I´m hoping there is a way to access this key that I was pressing on the old keyboard.

Is this assumption wrong and if not what is the combination because whenever I search online for this I just find a whole list of all the individual key codes for each accented letter and I don't really want to try and memorise them all individually.

Answer 1

I think you're referring to the Extended keyboards.

[For Windows 10] Check your Region and language settings : Select the language in the list : Options button : Add a keyboard : United Kingdom Extended : Optionally remove the normal UK one.

You can then use Alt Gr (or Ctrl+Shift) as follows:

• Alt Gr <vowel> → éíóú, etc
• ` <vowel> → è, etc
• Alt Gr+^ <vowel> → ê, etc
• Alt Gr+" <vowel> → ë, etc
• Alt Gr+~ <character> → ñ, etc

Windows 7 has a similar way of accessing the keyboards via the control panel.