Apache OpenOffice Community Forum

At the moment I often need to type Spanish words in amongst English text. If I have to type a word with an accent (e.g. autobús) I have to go to Insert, Special Character and find the character, click on it, then close the menu option and carry on with the rest of the word, which takes ages. Normally elsewhere in OSX if you hold down a key it displays all the alternative characters under that key and you can pick one quite quickly, but in Open Office holding down the key simply repeats it (e.g. autobuuuuuuuuuuu).
Is there a way of disabling key repeat in Open Office and reverting to the standard OSX function? Or is there another quick way to type special characters within Open Office?

I cannot answer for a Mac, but on Xubuntu using OO writer, pressing Shift Alt-Gr then a' gives á. Press Shift Alt-Gr (release it) then two chars such as a letter and then the modifier key - try o then ", or e then '.

I also don't know about the specific Mac problem. I use the extension Compose Special Character for inserting accented characters in Spanish. I type e' and then press a special key combination ( ALT + Z in my case but you can choose what you like) and it becomes é.

Jeremy_H wrote: Or is there another quick way to type special characters within Open Office?

[Solved] Special characters insertion (for French and Spanish) (using Mac OS X)

If this solved your problem please go to your first post use the Edit button and add [Solved] to the start of the title. You can select the green checkmark icon at the same time.