How to use blue symbols on HP laptop keyboard

Hi!

I just got a new HP laptop and do not know how to access the special characters available on the keyboard: ie/ the pounds sign, the cent sign, etc. Some keys even have two characters on them.

I've tried FN + numlock, but that just activates the number pad.

Of course the online user manual is useless !

I've tried all combinations of ALT, SHFT, etc. but have yet to access the symbols on those keys. I know that I can use ALT and a 3 or 4 digit number for those special characters, but as they're right on my keyboard, I might as well make use of them.

Can anyone help?
Thanks!

 

Other than the "number lock" I don't think you can lock the other blue characters you just press the function key and what ever blue character when you want to at the same time. Now if you use a certain symbol a lot I think you can map a shortcut using keys.

 

Thanks very much for your reply.

I have tried using the function key in correspondence with the" blue character" keys but unfortunately that doesn't work either. I'll keep trying to find an answer, maybe even contact HP if I get really desperate but if all else fails, I'll go the shortcut route.

Thanks again!

 

I may be missing your question here, but AFAIK caps lock and num lk are the only "locking" keyboard settings.

To access the "#", or any other character above the normal key character, use the shift key. to access any of the characters that have an outline or box around them, use the fn key.

On the typical HP notebook, the blue keys are QuickPlay keys.

 

Thanks for your reply. The buttons I'm referring to are not the quickplay keys and neither is it pressing shift and then whatever is above the 4 or 5 ( to get $ or % for example).

On my keyboard, below the F buttons (F1...) some of the keys have blue symbols on them. For example, the key with 4 and $ (after you press shift +4) also has a blue "cent" sign (¢) on it -- other buttons have other symbols. I have tried to use the Fn key in conjunction with them but they do not work.

It's not a huge deal as I know how to use alt codes to get the same affect, but it's a bit irksome having these right on the keyboard and not knowing how to use them. It would certainly help if HP would include some decent documentation or online help....

Thanks!

 

That's how you use them...

Hold fn and then press that button.

 

After clicking in the document so it is active. That should work.

 

I guess maybe I have a problem then because that does not work for me.
Thanks for your replies, I will contact HP and see what's up.

 

What HP notebook is this? If you have any of the recent models make sure you have installed the Quicklaunch buttons software/driver and set to load at startup since it is required for some of the special Fn keys to work.

 

I have a very recent model, I just bought it about a week ago.

I did not know about installing the Quicklaunch buttons software/driver -- that may be my problem. Thank you very much, I will give this a go!

 

Was this ever resolved? I activated my blue keys in msn messenger without knowing how.

 

I did the same thing, do you know how to fix it?
When typing in msn when I type a question mark i get the e with the line over it instead. I dont know how i activiated the blue keys, everything works find in a word document though

 

I occasionally activate the blue keys in Firefox. The blue character shows up only in Firefox, so I restart Firefox and all is well.

I have no idea how this happens, and neither do three HP people on the phone.

Today I had a new problem. I did something by accident and then all of a sudden my ENTER key (both of them) (the carriage return keys) became HOT keys to start the HP Power Option screen. Even with all the windows minimized and me just staring at the desktop, the ENTER key did the same thing. I had to restart to fix it.

(I have an HP Pavilion Entertainment PC.)

I'm not sure if anyone on the entire planet knows what is going on here, but if there is such a person then please ask him or her to email me.

 

I am having the exact same problem as you guys. I bought this laptop six months ago and I have yet to figure out how to use the blue symbols on some of my keys. The documentation that comes with the laptop is minimal and the "help" sections online are equally as useless.

I finally gave up until today I was online on a message board and lo and behold, instead of getting the question mark symbol I'm getting a big E with a line over it. Yet when I type normally in Word or whatever, I can't engage those symbols for the life of me.

So today I bit the bullet and finally got online with HP. After an agonizing hour of answer useless questions (questions I'm sure they were asking simply to make it look like they were doing something) I was told to download a driver that I already have.

This situation is ridiculous! Someone had to put those magical blue symbols on my keyboard and as they were on the keys, I assume it happened at the HP factory. So then why can't anyone explain how the heck to use them?

I've tried to FN (combined with ALT, CTRL, etc.) to no avail.

My laptop is good otherwise, but this situation is frustrating me to no end. Thang goodness I'm not alone, although my sympathies go out to all of you in the same boat.

I'll be forever grateful if someone can solve this for us.

Thanks!

 

I found the solution.
When you have the é is because you accidentally activated the weird symbols mode. It's activated by pressing Ctrl+fn+right Shift. To deactivate, press Ctrl+fn+right Shift twice, meaning Ctrl+fn+right Shift then let go of Shift while still holding Ctrl and fn, then press Shift again.
It took me 15 mins of methodical button pressing to figure this out. And I registered in this forum just to post this for you poor souls who have the same annoyance as I did.

 

Thank you very much that solution. The problem is intermittent and is not happening now, but I will try this next time I get that problem. It would be really nice if HP support were half as helpful as people like you. It is pathetic that after time and time again talking to their support they have no idea what I should do.

Thank you very much for taking the time to post this message.

 

Ok I will clear up all this confusion right here and then.

First of all you have too types of extra keys, you have the function keys and the billingual keyboard keys (the blue keys everyone is talking about). What happens is that HP designs these keyboard with a billingual layout. When you receive your keyboard and for the most people your keyboard is in the US English language so you use all the regular white keys. When you do the Ctrl+Fn+Right Shift you switch to the the billigual layout. Which means that the blue characters become prioritie. So examble, if you are in the billingual layout, when you shift+6 you will get a question mark, not the ^ sign.

Hopes this help clear up all this confusion. So in resume, the blue characters are for the multi-lingual layout.

 

An addendum here..

The HP "Blue" keys are indeed the "French" input keys. There appear to be two separate multilingual input methods. The most commonly used for Canadians, however, is the "Canadian French". If you check your Language Bar, you will find there is probably more than one keyboard there. (This one frustrated the _____ out of me when it happened on a non-multilingual keyboard, just cause I told Vista I lived in Canada, and it installed the Canadian keyboard for me.) Anyhow, go into the control panel, into regional and language options. If you never want to be stuck with the É instead of ? then remove the canadian french keyboard. If you DO want it, then just make sure you have the language bar on the taksbar somewhere (there is a setting to use the language bar) and just clikc on it to use US for normal white keys, and French Candian for the blue keys. keep in mind there are TWO sets of clue characters, so not all of them are going to work for the French canadian language.. Still looking through to find out what the other languages are....

**EDIT**

Ok. I just figured the rest out...
Those blue characters, such as the ±@£ that are ont he 123 and the «» keys, and so forth, are all part of the Canadian French layout. If you never use them, as I said, just default to US layout, and remove the french canadian keyboard layout.
To use the french keys.. Swithc to the French Candian layout. Find the missing things, like the ? key above the 6, in blue. and the strange ones, like ±¤ and ° are all accessed by pressing "CTRL"+"ALT" and the key, such as 1, 5 or the one with the »«\ and | on it.. (bottom left, by shift)

Hope this all makes sense.... HP REALLY needs to create a document on this.. I`m off to their site to see if there is any new info there...


Hope this helps someone....

 

Thanks you guys for continuing to clear this up.

HP really does need to get a document and explanation out. It is pathetic how lacking the documentation and support is nowadays.

Thanks again!

 

I hope this page comes up for when people google this problem!

I have a DELL and the solution worked for me as well.

I put in "keyboard settings É instead of ? on MSN" and finally got to this page (after 20 pages of people saying to restart, reinstall msn, and other useless answers)!

Ctrl+Fn+ right Shift (let go of shift only) & right Shift again. THANK YOU SO MUCH!

 

I accidentally turned on my blue keys as well and couldn't make them revert back.
I have a new HP Pavilion.
The solution above worked for me.
Thank you very much!

I registered for this forum just to say "Thanks!" to all who've been so helpful.

Phased1

 

THANK YOU, you are amazing, I have never been on this site but you helped me and now I will never forget you, thank you again

 

i have a gateway laptop and for me i have to press Ctrl+Fn+any shift once not twice.i am just letting all those people out there that found that the other solutions didnt work, because i was kept pressing it twice and all it did was reactivate the symbols

 

This is great! i just had this problem, new that asking windows or HP wouldn't do any good, so googled and found this. like Zarin said, using control panel>Regional and Language settings is a really good idea. i removed the French canadian key board, then tried ctrl+fn+SHIFT thing, and nothing happened. this is a good way to fool proof your computer against the frustration of the bilingual keyboard. Know too, that HP is not the only company that employs these keyboards. my dads Toshiba laptop also has a bilingual keyboard, and he actually had similar problems with accidentally activating them and not knowing how to turn them off. It's shame that not only Hp but nobody has adequate documentation on things like this.

 

OH MY DEAR LORD!!!! Thank you thank you thank you!!

 

Thanks so much. I chatted with Hp on line they found your message. I also found that restarting windows mail corrected the problem.

 

To access the blue symbols simply press Control, Shift. Doing it a second time produces the lower case version of the blue symbol. Doing it a third time restores the keyboard to the standard symbols.

 

Thank you this came up on the first google page when I had the problem. I think it's funny that the person responsible for solving it used the brute force technique: "15 min of methodical button pressing". When I signed up to the forum to thank you after fixing the problem my e-mail read example"hotmail.com -ha ha I hit the Ctrl+fn+shift again what are the chances? I knew just what to do. P.S. I have an L shaped little finger.

 

It would seem that this a very common HP Pavilion problem with layouts.
My Dell uses Alt+Shift to change languages.

It is a very odd combination the Alt+Shift+Ctrl. But as recommended above, erasing the French layout will also solve the problem, since you cannot change between one option (pretty obvious, huh?).

To do so, go to the bottom right corner of the bar. There should be the language bar. Go to Settings... and simply remove the extra keyboard layouts that are not needed.

This might have happened if you signed in a program as part of the French Canadian side. I am not sure.

 

You can set the layout switching shortcut within the Regional and Language options in the Control Panel. This is a feature of Windows Vista itself; not just HP computers. I have both my Dell laptop and custom desktop setup to switch between the US standard and US International layouts with the Ctrl+Shift combination.

 

thankyou so much that was really helpfull, so basicly you can go into the é thing by pressing ctrl+fn+shift and if you want a one of the blue buttons then cold ctrl+alt and press the one you want while your in the é thing ¶§µ¾½¼¤¢£@± lol and if you want to get out of the é thing then just hold ctrl+fn and push shift twice

 

Quite simply:

Start in normal mode (normal mode: you're able to type the question mark on the key above the lower right ctrl key).

Press ctrl+right shift. This activates secondary function keys (all the upper blue symbols).
Access upper blue symbols by using the regular shift+key you want combo.

Press ctrl+right shift again, this activates tertiary blue symbols (all the lower blue symbols on the keys).
To access these, use ctrl+alt+key you want.

Press ctrl+right shift to deactivate.

(Alriiight haha! Took me so long to research this stupid little curiosity I had! Lol. Hope I helped someone.)

 

I want to keep this thread about keyboard mapping errors (= keyboard mapping features) alive because my friend just got a new HP s5220f Slimline Pavilion in Canada and he experienced this problem in Word (see previous posts for solution). He was about to make the store he bought it from take it back - and still might. Maybe we need many more irate customers to do this very thing so that computers sold in BC won't automatically be set up with the assumption that people WANT to be able to toggle between French and English using a cryptic keyboard combination.

In fact, more people in Vancouver, British Columbia speak Mandarin than French as their native language. (Whoops!)

Anyway, I wanted to put in several phrases about weird character mappings for Google to index, in the hopes that others searching for them might find this thread:

é instead of ?
@ displays as “
^ becomes ?

(Isn't technology wonderful?)

Cheers!

 

It is the french AZERTY keyboard, the worst design ever if you ask me, yet I have to deal with QWERTY at home and AZERTY at uni...

 

There are three modes to the Canadian French keyboard. Simultaneously pressing ctrl + fn + right shift will change the mode. If you are in Mode 1, press ctrl + fn + right shift and you will access Mode 2. Press ctrl + fn + right shift again and you will access Mode 3. Press it again and you will return to Mode 1.

Mode 1:

Lower case Upper case

`12345678990-= ~!@#$%^&*()_+
qwertyuiop[] QWERTYUIOP{}
asdfghjkl;'\ ASDFGHJKL:"|
\zxcvbnm,./ |ZXCVBNM<>?



Mode 2:

Lower case Upper case

/1234567890-= \!@#$%?&*()_+
qwertyuiop^ç QWERTYUIOP¨Ç
asdfghjkl;èà ASDFGHJKL:ÈÀ
ùzxcvbnm,.é ÙZXCVBNM'"É


Mode 3:

Lower case Upper case

#1234567890-= |!"/$%?&*()_+
qwertyuiop^¸ QWERTYUIOP^¨
asdfghjkl;`< ASDFGHJKL:`>
«zxcvbnm,.é »ZXCVBNM'.É


You can quickly check to see what mode you`re in by pressing the first button on the number row (to the left of the number 1 and directly under the escape key.) If it types a ` you`re in Mode 1, if it types a / then you`re in Mode 2, and if it types a # then you`re in Mode 3.

Once you`re clear on how that works you can easily access the other special figure blue keys. Here`s the trick. Go to Mode 3. Press and continuously hold down ctrl + alt. The keyboard will then produce these figures...

\±@£¢¤¬¦²³¼½¾
§¶[]
~{}
°µ¯´

It took me a lot of playing around to figure this out. I love a good puzzle as much as the next person but this information should have been supplied by HP, for shame!

 

THIS IS EXACTLY WHAT I WAS LOOKING FOR! Thank you. The manual was way too small for all the features of this laptop.