How to Type Chinese in Windows 7

Posted in tutorials

1.  In Windows 7, go to “Start -> Control Panel -> Clock, Language, and Region -> Region and Language“…

2.  In the Region and Language dialog that comes up, go to the Keyboards and Languages tab and click the Change keyboards button …

3.  As you can see in the Text Services and Input Languages dialog, only the US keyboard is currently installed.  Click the Add button …

4.  In the Add Input Language dialog, select the one of the Chinese input languages…

and click OK.

5. Now your Text Services and Input Languages shows the Chinese keyboard in addition to the US keyboard …

Click OK to this and the other dialog boxes.

6. Now you see the the language bar icon in the Notification Area.

The icon currently shows EN because English is still our default keyboard for the currently active application.  As you move from one application to another, you may see the language icon switch to the language that was set for that application.

7.  You can switch to the Chinese keyboard by clicking on the language icon and checkmark the Chinese keyboard.

See how the language icon switched to CH to indicate that the Chinese keyboard is in effect.

8.  Sometimes it help to display the full language bar, so you can checkmark “Show the language bar” …

This is what the Chinese language bar looks like …

You can dock the language bar back to the notification area by clicking on the minimize icon on the bar.

9.  With Asian languages, sometimes it is helpful to use the IME pad.   From the Tools menu of the language bar you can select IME Pad.  IME stands for “Image Method Editor”.

10. Launch WordPad and try typing in the new langage.

11.  To uninstall a keyboard, go back to the “Text Services and input languages” dialog, select the language to remove and click the Remove button.  Click OK to the rest of the dialogs.

More Information:

To learn more about using different language keyboard input see page 241 to 247 of Window 7 Bible.