Typing Spanish Accents

Windows Vista or Win 7

1. Start-->Control Panel-->Clock, Language, Region-->Change Keyboards
2. New Window: Click the Change Keyboards button
3. New Window: Click the Add button
4. Select United States-International keyboard
5. Click OK
6. From drop down menu (Default Input Language) select United States International

Using the U.S. - International Keyboard

If you followed the above directions carefully, your keyboard will now react slightly differently than it did before. First of all, notice that if you strike the single apostrophe (') key, nothing happens. To type the single apostrophe now, you must strike the single apostrophe key and then strike the space bar. When you strike the spacebar, the apostrophe will appear.
The next thing to note is that the quotes (") key behaves the same way as the apostrophe key. You must first strike the quotes key and then strike the space bar in order to create the (") symbol. These two minor inconveniences are more than made up for by the ease with which you can now type the special characters.
To type the special characters, two keystrokes are required. To type the á, you need only strike the apostrophe key and then the letter a. The other characters are just as easy:

• á = ' + a
• é = ' + e
• í = ' + i
• ó = ' + o
• ú = ' + u
• ñ = ~ + n
• ü = " + u

To type the special punctuation characters, you need to hold down on the Alt key while you strike the appropriate punctuation mark. On some keyboards, only one of the two Alt keys will work for this.

• ¡ = Alt (hold down) + !
• ¿ = Alt (hold down) + ?

Using Cryptic Codes

If, for some reason, you don't want to change your keyboard, you can always type in the troublesome cryptic codes. Using this arcane system, the following codes apply:

• á = Alt + 0225
• é = Alt + 0233
• í = Alt + 0237
• ó = Alt + 0243
• ú = Alt + 0250
• ñ = Alt + 0241
• ü = Alt + 0252

• ¡ = Alt + 0161
• ¿ Alt + 0191

When using this utterly out-dated system, there are two important things to remember. First, when you type in the numbers, some keyboards require that you use the "numeric keypad" located to the side, rather than the numbers along the top. Second, on some keyboards, only one of the two Alt keys will work for this.

All this is from this site  http://www.studyspanish.com/accents/typing.htm#winVista