Instruction how to install Polish diacritic letters on your computer

If you think that having "English" Windows you can't have Polish diacritic letters you are wrong.

You need to have:
1) this instruction printed
2) a little courage
3) in most cases your Windows installation CDs

This instruction is for Windows XP.
In other version of Windows steps will be very very similar.

1. Open Control Panel (Click Start button -> Settings -> Control Panel)
2. Click Regional and Language Options icon
3. Go to Advanced tab
4. In Code Page Conversion table find and check on "28592 (ISO 8859-2 Central Europe)".
It should be somewhere in middle of the list.

Follow steps 5 - 12 below only if you can't find entry mentioned in point #4. Otherwise go to step #13.

5. On the same tab, a little above that Code Page Conversion table, change combo box entry from whatever you have there (i.e.English) to Polish.

If you don't have Polish on the list, you can't have Polish letters.
Sorry, just click cancel button and close all windows.
6. Click OK button.
7. If you get message which says "The required files are already installed on your hard drive. Would you like to skip file copying...." click Yes.

In other cases Windows will ask you to insert your Windows installation disc
8. After that, Windows will ask you to restart computer. Click Yes.
9. Go to Start -> Settings -> Control Panel -> Regional and Language Options -> Advanced tab
10. Change you combo box entry back to value which you had there before (i.e. English).
11. Click OK button and as before click Yes as many times as needed and restart your computer.
12. Now you should have 28592 (ISO 8859-2 Central Europe) entry on a list, so go to step #1.

13. Once you checked on 28592 (ISO 8859-2 Central Europe) entry, click OK button.
You have to restart your computer after that.
14. Go to Start -> Settings -> Control Panel -> Regional and Language Options -> Languages tab.
15. Click Details button
16. Click Add button on Settings tab
17. Select Polish as input language and Polish (Programmers) as Keyboard layout/IME:
18. Click OK button.
19. Now you should see your previous keyboard and new Polish / Polish Programmer keyboard on Installed Services list

20. Click OK button. You have to restart you computer now even if windows does not ask for that.
21. Go to Start -> Settings -> Control Panel -> Regional and Language Options -> Languages tab.
22. Click Details button
23. Select Polish - Polish (Programmers) as Default Input Language
24. Click OK Button and close Control Panel. Restart your windows.

Congratulations you have Polish letters installed on you computer.
You can try them:
Push and hold RIGHT alt key and click a, c, e, l, n, o, s, t, x, z.
If you want to have capital letters push and hold Shift + RIGHT Alt keys and click a, c, e, l, n, o, s, t, x, z

There is one disadvantage.
Because you selected Polish - Polish (Programmers) as Default Input Language,
some programs (Microsoft Word for example) may think that you want to type in Polish
and your spelling tool may try to check your document as Polish document.

There are a couple of solutions for that.
1) You can set default language in MS Word
2) You can go to Control Panel and change Default Input Language back to your original language but you can't type Polish letter after that.

3) You can also go to Control Panel as in points 21 -23 and play with Language Bar and Key Settings buttons in Preferences frame. (recommended)

Good Luck

if instruction above works for you type some polish letters here as reply.

ąćęłńóśćźż
ĄĆĘ£ŃÓŚĆ-Ż

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Related:

Polish alphabet win xp


It's a code page problem. Perhaps it is possible to set the appropriate code page in GaduGadu. Find a menu item that looks like "strona kodowa" or "kodowanie". I do not think that it can be resolved on the Windows level.

That's useful. Thanks.

Great info but there is still one problem, if you set this up as I have had on my computer for many years now on a English MS word software, you will need a language pack for Polish from Microsoft ($24) to do the spell check as it will not be recognised, as the base MS word software language is in English. This is only to setup the possibility to use Polish letter characters.

Nice info for people who don’t know anyway mate :o)

yes that is true.
It just enables option which allows you to type and display polish characters, but it does not install anything extra for Office or any other software.

If document under Microsoft Word will be marked as Polish, MS Word will display information that Polish thesaurus can't be found. You have to buy it separatelly.

I noticed that some applications do not display Polish characters correctly if input for non Unicode characters is not set to Polish.
So change to or keep Polish in combo box described in point #5 and don't change it back to original settings as described in points 9 -12. Just skip them.

Well what about the new vistas or w.e.....because everything with this pc is pissing me off....nothing is compatible lol

Hej. I have always had problems with gadu-gadu in this respect. I can read letters in a conversation but can not read any of my friends 'opis' because my computer cannot understand them or something. Will this procedure help?

It should.


I have no idea, but it should be similar.

Hęy witęk,thąńkś fór thę ińśtrućtiónś óń hów tó inśtąll pólish diąłćęćt!!!
Juśt łęttińg yóu kńów thąt it wórkś hęhę

This is simpler than working with Word.

Assuming you work with Windows XP:
1. Control Panel
2. date, Time, language and Regional..
3. add other languages
4. details
5. key settings - choose Polish (Programmers)
6. add - it should put the icon in your task bar
7. click Language bar next to key settings to see if the adding of the icon to the task bar is checked.

It should work. Then type as usual. When you come to a letter that you want it to have a little "thingy" press Alt & Ctr at the same time and voila: śćżź

Make sure that the language bar icon in the task bar is checked for polish"programmers'.
It defaults to English

It works, if you don't need to type a lot...

I like yours Eurola better!!

On a MAC you can find the polish characters through the Character Palette, which can be turned on in the International control panel. The Palette displays all of the characters available in a given font. You can save frequently used ones to the Favourites Pane.

Yeah, it's easy under Windows...Besides, if you only need that in Word and don't care about the rest you can also set up the keyboarrd shortcuts. That being said, I'm now trying to set shortcuts for Polish discritics in Office 2008 (Word) under OSX Leopard. The trouble is I can't see the bloody symbols I need even though they are in the system char list. Do I have to get some sort of langpack??? Is there any way to do that at all?

It's not that difficult if you can go beyond Windows.

I use Linux, which allows me to install different keyboards on the same machine really easily.

Once you've got it up and running, you only have to change between keyboards by clicking on a menubar item. All it takes is one click. You can have an "English" keyboard one minute and have a "Polish" keyboard the next.

The "important" languages are installed by default but you must tell the system that you want use a particular one at a particular time.

Honesltly, it's much easier than the Windows way.

More info...

Even if you use windows all the time, you can use what's known as a Live CD to boot into Linux without affecting your hard drive. When it's asking you to set up, choose the Polish language option.

So you can use this to send your posts to polishforums without having to worry that you've damaged xp or Vista. Once you've finished, choose shutdown, take out the CD and reboot back into windows.

If anyone wants to know more, I'll be happy to explain how to do it. But go to ubuntu.com first of all and download the latest CD. (There are many other options, but ubuntu is probably the easiest.)

By the way, Linux is free. Nic!

good thread (thumbsup) was wondering why i couldn't read any polish letters on Gadu Gadu....POLSKA!!!!!!

Well, we are glad to help here. Just Google a polish phrase and chances are - you get the PF! :)

Don't want to sound repetitive, but setting up a Linux box does make it really easy.

My principal keyboard is Irish, my second is English and my third is Polish.

Which means I can get ą ę ż ć and everything else by clicking a box on the menubar.

It is much easier than trying to get "foreign" characters in Windows.

You will be able to enter and send Polish diacritics in Gadu Gadu, but if the operating system that receives it is in English then the characters will be lost, as below:

• 
  gadu_gadu.JPG
  

It's still easier in Linux. Witek's tutorial is brilliant for Windozers but all I have to do is click a menubar item to switch between Polish and English.

Cześć

At the risk of repeating yourself again (and we wouldn't want that would we:), not all of us can use Linux because certain programs are only designed for windows for example gadu gadu.

I have my own translation and proofreading company and all of the programs that are used with translating are windows based and open office is no match for the flexibility of MS Word.

I am not knocking Linux and I would love to use it, after all it's free, but it will remain the playtoy of IT guys and hobbyists without significant improvement.

thank you very much for instruction , i reali happy to get it n i ll learn polish language in like gdańsk and n like all polka people

Fair play to you ukpolska for keeping an open mind. You've probably gathered that I'm a Linux devotee but, in all honesty, I do find Linux easier for multiple keboard use than Windows.

However, I think my posts were perhaps getting to the stage where I sounded like a Linux zealot (heaven forbid such an awful thought), so I'll leave it there. But do check out Crossover Office as a way of doing Windows stuff in Linux.

Anyway, I'm sounding like a zealot again...

:)

Czeṡċ jeszce raz

This works very, vey easy! Thanks a lot! I already thought it would be impossible for me to do so =)
Kocham Cię ;)

I have the polish diacritic letters installed on my computer. But can't remember how I did it. I am using Vista as is my friend who's computer I am trying to fix.

We have gone through the control panel method, but I vaguely remember when I did it that I installed a "language pack" or something like that. Will I need to do this for them?

I just can't remember how I did it, it seemed really easy last time though.

I'm sorry to ressurrect this, but is there any way to be able to read the diacritic letters correctly on GG if I'm using an English operating system, like shown above?

I can input them just fine, and from memorizing I'm slowly being able to automatically recognize the words the distorted letters are in, but it'd be far better to be able to see what I write...

Unfortunately, you can't have more than one language as 'input defaults' on a given PC. To achieve this you would need two PC's- say, a desktop and a laptop, one with English as an 'input default', and one with another language as an 'input default'.

There is a program called Microsoft Applocale available for free download from MS that allows you to run non-unicode applications with their original languages.

microsoft.com/globaldev/tools/apploc.mspx

Push and hold RIGHT alt key and click a, c, e, l, n, o, s, t, x, z.
If you want to have capital letters push and hold Shift + RIGHT Alt keys and click a, c, e, l, n, o, s, t, x, z

If you want to type faster, you can use the Polish keyboard directly on your English computer by selecting Polish(214) instead of Polish programmer per witek7205 instruction. Just need to remember where the letters are, eg Z is interchanged with Y, etc...

Dzięki za instrukcje

cćśżłńśśśśśś Some letters work here but not in my Incredimail email box. ł for example works here but not in email.. Can you comment pl
ease?

stas1313....on my hp computer w/windows 7, all the above works great except lower case s.
on hp computers when keystroke right alt/s is pressed, up comes an hp pop-up that indicates ur hp system statistics....
on hp computers are you aware of any alternate keystrokes to get polish lower case s?

witek7205.....on hp computers when keystrokes right alt s are pressed, a pop-up window appears giving system statistics......do you know of alternate keystroke to get Polish lower case s on hp computers?........upper case s works fine......

regards, ron binkowski

Before I figured out how to get Polish keyboard on my computer I used to copy and paste diacriticals.
Cumbersome, but it works.