How to fix the ?/é and ‘/` problems permanently

Have you ever been typing along to find that your question mark has been replaced by “é”? How about went to enter an apostrophe and found it coming out backwards ( ` as opposed to ‘ ). If so, you’re not alone. You’re simply experiencing annoying symptoms of what Microsoft calls a “feature”: The Language Bar.

In Windows XP, Vista, and 7, the Language Bar is most often found in the bottom-right corner, beside the clock area, circled here.

If the Language Bar is giving you trouble, chances are that you made the mistake of telling Windows somewhere along the line that you’re Canadian. Usually, this wouldn’t be a problem; however, when you tell Windows that you’re Canadian, it assumes that you’re English/French bilingual. Hence, point of the Language Bar is to allow you to switch between the two languages (and keyboard layouts) with ease; one simple keyboard shortcut is all you need to make the switch, and if you’re having this problem, chances are you simply hit it accidentally. Pressing CTRL+SHIFT once or twice (check after each attempt) should solve the problem. However, if you want to permanently disable this functionality, this guide will show you how to.

Note: If you are bilingual and simply find you hit the keyboard shortcut at inopportune moments, do steps 1 and 2 and then jump to Step 6 where I show you how to change the shortcut.

Step 1: Open up Control Panel (sometimes found right in your Start Menu, and almost always found under (My) Computer) and fire up the Region(al) and Language (Settings) window.

Step 2: Go to the Keyboards and Languages tab and click on the “Change keyboards…” button.

Step 3: There are a couple of things you want to do on the first tab (“General”). First of all, under “Installed services”, ensure that under English (Canada), there is a line that says “US”. If there is, select it and click “Move Up” until it’s as far up as it’ll go. If that line isn’t there, check out step 3b, below:

Step 3b: On the “General” tab, hit the “Add…” button. A window that looks like this will come up:

Scroll down to “English (Canada)” and check the box beside “US” (like it shows in the picture, above). Click OK and move on to…

Step 4: Still on the “General” tab, under “Default input language”, select “English (Canada) – US”. Go back under “Installed services”, select “Canadian Multilingual Standard”, and click Remove. Then click Apply. Your window should look like this:

Step 5: Move over to the “Language Bar” tab. In the “Language Bar” box, select “Hidden.” I also uncheck “Show text labels on the Language Bar”, but this isn’t really necessary. Click Apply; your window should now look like this:

Step 6: Move over to the “Advanced Key Settings” tab. Click on “Between input languages” in the “Hot keys for input languages box” and click on “Change Key Sequence…”. Select “Not Assigned” for both options and click OK. Hit Apply and your window should look like this:

 Step 6b (specifically for the bilingual folk):  Select “To English (Canada) – Canadian Multilingual Standard” in the “Hot keys for languages box”, and then click on “Change Key Sequence…”. Set whatever shortcut key you want and then click OK. After you finish these instructions, you can use that shortcut key to automatically switch to that keyboard layout. You might want to either set a shortcut key for “Between input languages” and “To English (Canada) – US” if you find that you switch frequently between your keyboard layouts.

Step 7: Click “OK” all of the windows we opened to save everything. Save all of your work, restart your computer, and you’re done!

These instructions should make it so you never have to deal with the é/? (or the ‘/`) issue ever again. Leave a comment and let me know if this helped you; I’d really appreciate the feedback! 🙂 Also, if you have any questions about this process, if it doesn’t work for you (it happens in very rare occasions), or if you have any other computer questions you’d like me to address in a future edition of this little thing of mine, leave a comment and let me know.

Later days! 😀

[Reposted from Facebook on Monday, August 29, 2011; original posting date Sunday, August 28, 2011]