Thad,
That is exacly what I was doing the whole time, the alt+168 thing as I would usually in Microsoft Word or something but there is one thing I didn’t do which was to try to change the font! Maybe a different font would not have the problem.
I read a few posts that I found on here and other people are having the same problem, but they found a work around by copyin from another program or Internet Explorer and pasting the text right into the project. That wasn’t working for me in any way shape or form. Anyway so what I did was…
I closed out all my programs and went to the control panel of my computer and changed my keyboard options to Spanish (Puerto Rico) just because that happens to be where I’m from but anyway!
So that didn’t do anything except tell my computer that I had installed a spanish keyboard, (I guess!) Then I went back and told my computer in the control panel that it was located in Puerto Rico and re-booted.
What a mistake that was!!! Re-boot attempt 3 times and nothing but a black screen with a blinking cursor! Now my situation was worse because no computer and no project and it was due at 9am! Holy Crap! So after holding the power button and re-booting for the 4th time! It came back to life. (This computer is about 2 months old) so I would stab my self in the eye if I just broke it!
Anyway, After the complete boot, everything was in spanish!!! Including AE when I opened it! It was kind of cool, but lucky I understood the language! Anyway, now I clicked in between the text and inserted my characters with the same font and it worked(with the project that is) because now my whole computer was in spanish!
So to sum it all up, the project turned out successful, the tv station had it in their hands on time, the client was happy with the final results, but I ended up stuck with a spanish computer!
Then I was curious to know if it would still work in new projects even if I switched my computer back to English! So I switched it back, Re-booted and attempted with the same exact font and what do you know, It worked! But it worked because in the control panel of my computer I had the option to add a keyboard language and chose between them when you use one. So I select my new added Spanish keyboard in the control panel, then I opened up AE and I was able to insert my spanish characters with no problem. The keys were mapped different though. The character I needed was next to the Backspace key and the other was [SHIFT + EXCLAMATION] keys.
Well, thanks for your time and help. I just wanted to put the info up just in case someone else runs into this. By the way…
I’m using the AE Proffesional version that came out right before CS3 on a Dell with windows Vista Home Premium.