Non-English Keyboards
Windows Vista

View Windows XP Instructions
View Windows 2000/NT Instructions

Below are the instructions for Windows Vista.

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Available Keyboards & Applications
Activate Language Bar
Activate U.S. International Keyboard
Switch Keyboards in Applications
Keyman 7 and Additional Unicode Keyboards
Character Map New Page
Typing Right-To-Left (RTL) Languages in Word New Page

Available Keyboards and Applications

The following keyboards are available by default from Microsoft

Most Western European (Spanish, French, German, Italian and so forth)
Most Central European (Polish, Hungarian, Czech, Slovak, and so forth)
Most Baltic Languages (Lithuanian, Estonian, Finnish, and so forth)
Modern Greek
Cyrillic - Russian, Ukrainian, Belarusian, Bulgarian and so forth.

The following keyboards are available from Microsoft, but must be loaded from the system disk first

East Asian (Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, Thai)
Hebrew
Arabic, Farsi (Persian), Urdu
Other Middle Eastern: Syriac, Georgian, Armenian, Syriac
Indian Scripts: Hindi,Sanskrit, Tamil, Gujarati, Divehi, Bengali, Malayalam, Oriya, Sinhala
Ethiopic

Software Compatibility

Microsoft keyboards are compatible with most applications, but may not work with certain older applications.

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Activate the U.S. International Keyboard and Other Language Keyboards

This section discusses how to activate the U.S. International Keyboard (used for inputting accent marks) as well as keyboards for other languages.

Go to Start » Control Panel to open the Control Panels window,
Click on the Regional and Language Options icon. A list of time and currency specifications will be displayed.
Note: If this icon is not visible, cick the Category menu at top and select Clock, Language and Region.
In the control panel window, click on the Keyboards and Languages tab on the top.
Click the Change Keyboards button to open the input options window (labeled Text Services and Input Options).
Click the Add button to open a list of availale keyboards on your system.
Click the plus sign for the language and country you want. Click the plus sign next to Keyboard to see possible variants. Some languages may only have one.
Note: The U.S. option always replicates the U.S. standard keyboard no matter which country you have selected.
Check the keyboard option you wish to activate.
Note: For the U.S. International keyboard, click the plus sign next to English (United States), then United States-International.

Settings for United States international keyboard (listed under English-United States)

Settings for Greek Polytonic keyboard (for Ancient Greek accents)
To see a keyboard layout, click the Preview button. A pop-up window showing which keys produce which symbol appears. Close this window when you are finished with the preview.
Click the OK button to close the list of keyboards. The keyboard you selected will be added to the list of input keyboards you have activated.
Cick the OK button to close input options window. Close the OK button another time to close the control panel.
Note: If you close these windows without clicking OK, then the keyboards will not be activated.
You should now see an EN icon in the lower right of your computer screen. See the Switch Keyboard in Applications instructions below for details on how to switch to the keyboard.This icon indicates that more than one keyboard is active on your system.

EN icon for the English keyboard

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Switch Keyboards in Applications

Make sure you have activated your target keyboards. See instructions for Activate the U.S. International Keyboard and Other Language Keyboards above. You should see an EN icon in the lower right of your computer screen. This icon indicates that more than one keyboard is active on your system.

EN icon for the English keyboard
Open an application such as a word-processor, HTML editor, spreadsheet or any other application in which you need to input text.
Select the appropriate language from the Language Bar menu. If the language you want is not in the menu, then you need to activate that keyboard as detailed in the instructions in the previous section.
For the International Keyboard, select EN English (United States) from the Language Bar, then United States-International from the Keyboard icon menu to the right.

The keyboard variant icon is to the right of the target language.
Begin typing in your document.
NOTE: For some keyboards such as Armenian, you may have to switch to another font such as "Arial Unicode."
Each time you switch applications, you will have to switch the keyboard from English to another language.

Change Default Keyboard

If you wish to set another keyboard besides the standard U.S. keyboard as the default for all languages, do the following.

Follow steps #1-4 of the activation instructions to open the Text Services and Input Languages window within the Regional and Language Options control panel.
In the Default input language menu at the top switch to one of the other keyboards you have activated. Click OK to close this window, then OK again to close the control panel.
Note: If you close the window without clicking OK, the default will not be reset.

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Typing Right-to-Left (RTL) Languages in Word 2007

In addition to activating a keyboard for Arabic or Hebrew, you may want to activate and use the Right-to-Left (RTL) and Left-to-Right (LTR) paragraph buttons in Microsoft Word.

To place the RTL and LTR buttons on a toolbar

Open a recent version of Microsoft Word for Windows.
Under the Tools menu, select Customize to open a pop-up window.
Click on the Toolbars tab, then click on the New button to create a blank toolbar window. In the second New Toolbar pop-up window, fill in a descriptive Toolbar name such as "RTL", then click OK to close this window. A blank gray window should be open.
In the first Customize pop-up window (Tools » Customize), click on the Commands tab.
In the Categories menu to the left, scroll down and select All Commands.
In the Commands menu to the right, scroll down and highlight Rtl Para (the button for Right-to-left paragraphs). Move this to the blank toolbar window.
Scroll up to Ltr Para (the button for left-to-right paragraphs), highlight and move to the blank toolbar window.
When you are finished click the Close button to close the Customize window.
A new toolbar with the RTL (right-to-left) and LTR (left-to-right) paragraph buttons will be open. The RTL button is a paragraph symbol followed by a blue triangle; the LTR button is a paragraph symbol with the blue triangle before it.

( RTL button)
( LTR button)

To use the RTL and LTR buttons

Open Microsoft Word and switch keyboards to Arabic or Hebrew. You may have to minimize or shrink your window in order to view the Language Bar on your desktop.
The cursor will change so that text is typed from right to left. Press the RTL button () in the toolbar to move the cursor all the way to the right side of the page.
To switch back to English, switch back to the English keyboard and press the LTR button ().
NOTE: You may be restricted to certain fonts such as "Times New Roman", "Arial" or "Tahoma".

Generate "Curly" Hindi/Arabic Numbers

Instructions are posted at http://www.personal.psu.edu/ejp10/blogs/gotunicode/2007/12/generating-arabic-hindi-curly.html

Note: The curly style of number (e.g. १,२,३) are actually called "Hindi numbers", while "Arabic" numbers refer to the straight Western style numbers of "1,2,3" (vs. older Roman numbers like "I,II,III").

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Keyman Unicode Keyboards

Tavultesoft has developed a utility called Keyman 7 which allows Windows users to install additional language keyboards not available from Microsoft. Keyman 7 is free for up to two keyboards. Tavultesoft also sells commercial versions with more options and Keyman Deveioper which allows users to create custom keyboard layouts.

Links to Keyman compliant keyboards can be found at:

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Non-English Keyboards
Windows Vista

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