This page will help you adjust the settings of the Language Bar, and the keyboard shortcuts or "hot keys" used to switch back-and-forth between input method editors.

     Open the "Regional and Language Options" control panel:

• Click on the Windows Start menu.
• Click on "Control Panel". (See the screen shot at left.)

    In Control Panels, do one of the following:

• In Control Panels Home, find "Clock, Language and Region" and click on "Change keyboards or other input methods." (See screen shot #1 below.)



• or, if you are in Control Panels Classic View, Find and double-click on the "Regional and Language Options" icon. (See screen shot #2 below.)

1. Click here in Control Panels Home:

2. Or double-click here in if you are in Control Panels "Classic View":

    When the "Regional and Language Options" control panel appears:

• Click the "Change keyboards..." button. ("Change keyboards" is not actually what we're doing...aren't you glad I'm helping you find this?)

     When "Text Services and Input Languages" appears:

• Click on the "Language Bar" tab:

Language Bar Settings

In the tab shown above, the radio button settings allow you to:

• float the Language Bar above your documents by default,
• leave it in the Task Bar (from which you can also launch it into floating mode at any time, then minimize back to the Task Bar),
• or hide it completely.

The checkboxes below that allow you to:

• make the floating language bar semi-transparent when not in use, and
• show at least two additional icons at all times, even in the Taskbar:
  • Language Bar Help, which is important if you are using the Chinese (Taiwan) Microsoft New Phonetic IME,
  • a Maximize icon, which you don't need because you can already launch the Language Bar into floating mode which by clicking once on the "EN" or "CH" button and selecting "Show the Language bar",
  • and maybe speech recognition icons like the microphone, but being "Pinyin Joe" I don't use those so I'm not sure about that.
• "Show text labels" does nothing for the IMEs I've helped you install. They show up next to, for example, the various versions of Spanish like "Spanish (Guatemala)".

Keyboard Shortcut Settings

The next tab over shows the Advanced Key Settings:

Hidden away here, as the first item, is an option to turn off Caps Lock by pressing the Shift key instead of pressing the Caps Lock key. Just like an old typewriter! But I'm dating myself.

Next are the "hot keys", or keyboard shortcuts, for switching between input languages. Personally, I find myself constantly hitting these accidentally, and I usually turn them off. But if you are constantly switching between languages and characters sets, you may love these.

You'll find options to turn off or modify any of these by clicking the "Change Key Sequence..." button. For example, changing "Between input languages" to the grave accent (`) and turning off the layout switch at least gets this away from my roaming paws:

Try this with each shortcut in the list, and you'll find various options, including a checkbox that turns them off entirely. The example below adjusts the hot keys for quickly switching from one of the CH methods back to your default EN keyboard:

Are we having fun yet? Need some help using these input methods? Then please read on...

Previous pages:
1. Introduction, and adding Simplified Chinese pinyin input
2. Adding Traditional Chinese pinyin input

Next page:
4. Learning to use the Microsoft pinyin IMEs

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