Monday, July 27, 2009

New laptop

Wade & I have a new laptop. It's our first laptop together (aww). It's actually Wade's first laptop, and his first new computer since 1993. Seriously. (He's been using my old laptop, but it died a few months ago.)

Anyway, this new laptop is a Gateway laptop and came loaded with Microsoft Vista. We purchased Office 2007 for it. I'm so lost!

If anyone out there can help me, I'd appreciate it! I will list my problems (relating to the laptop, of course!).

Today, here's what happened:
-If I wanted to type quotation marks, I couldn't type them. When in Word, I can type shift+' and quotation marks will be made. However, when I'm not in Word (such as in typing a blog post or using gmail to send an email), when I type that, it comes out with an accented e (un accent aigu, for those who speak French).
-If I wanted to put in a question mark, I couldn't type it. When in Word, I can type shift+/ to create question marks. However, when I'm not in Word, typing that combination puts in an upper-case E with an accent (another accent aigu).
So in order to put quotation marks or question marks into the post, I had to type it in Word, then cut and paste it into blogger or gmail or facebook. Not exactly convenient.

Yesterday, here's what happened:
-If I wanted to type an apostrophe, out can a lower case accented e. (I think it was another accent aigu, but I can't remember now). Notice how on Friday, I had few contractions? Go back and look. That's because I COULDN'T TYPE CONTRACTIONS. ARG! That meant I also couldn't denote possession. (How on earth do I refer to Wade's car if I can't put in an apostrophe? I put in a backwards apostrophe: those were working.) And I was too frustrated to type it in Word, where I could type apostrophes, then copy it into blogger or gmail.

I'm having other problems, but these two are frustrating me the last few days. Anyone have any ideas on why I can't always type quotation marks or question marks or apostrophes?

Note: sometimes I can, but most of the time, I can't. And I don't know if I am doing something to turn it on/off, or what's going on.

A little help?

5 comments:

Nicole said...

Hey Krista. Maybe your operating system (Vista) is a French version for some reason? Maybe call the store or Microsoft tech support. I did a quick Google search for you and all of the "help forums" are saying to reinstall the operating system.

But since your Microsoft Office (Word) works in English, maybe there's an easier way.

Good luck!

Nicole said...

PS apologies for starting a sentence with maybe twice. embarrassing!

Krista said...

No worries, Nicole. I'll try calling tonight!

The Professional Bridesmaid said...

That happens to me way too many times....I use Windows Vista (as Nicole pointed out) and for some reason the keyboard get defaulted to the French version. If you look to the bottom right corner of your screen, there should be a keyboard icon, click on that and change it. Hopefully, it's that.

Krista said...

That seems to have done the trick! Thanks!