Write Amharic on Windows 7 without a software application.

Whether it’s an application letter for a government agency or if it’s just to write Amharic on facebook, google or other websites, all of us have had the need to write Amharic more than once in our lives. Few years back every one had to learn Power Geez to write Amharic. The ability to write Amharic on a computer was something you only found in internet centers and with some people who know a lot about computers. But know, one can write Amharic in so many different ways.
My personal favorite way of writing Amharic would be using the
Sodere.com Amharic Auto magic tool that allows you to write ከበደ by writing ‘Kebede’. This means, to write አበበ, you would only need to write the letters a, b, e, b, e and it will automatically give you አበበ. It was so amazing when I saw it for the first time and I wrote as many complicated Amharic words in English as possible and it mostly gave me the proper Amharic words. For me nothing comes better than that.
But not all of us are entitled to getting internet when ever we want. So if you want to write Amharic letters in a computer without installing Power Geez or other software, all you have to do is the following. I’ll show you a longer approach and a direct shortcut.

What you need.
- Computer with Windows 7 Operating System and That’s It! Lets get down to it then.

Longer Approach.
1.    Go to Start
2.    Click Control Panel
3.    Click Clock, Language and Region

Note – If you don’t find it, just write Region or Language on the search bar on the top right. It will you before you even finish the whole word.
4.    Then a new windows pops out. Select  Keyboards and Languages tab.
5.    Click  Change keyboard button.

6.    Another windows pops out.
7.    Click  Add

8.    And Another Windows pops out.
9.    Select the language of your choice – on our case select Amharic (Ethiopia)

10.    Expand you selection by clicking the + icon on the left of the language you just selected.
11.    Expand the keyboard selection by clicking the plus (+) icon to the left of it.
12.    Then Select Amharic Input Method (Version 1.0)

 
Note – The version may be different on your computer.
13.    Then Click Ok on all the open windows and then you are ready to use Amharic. When you click ok on the last window you will see and EN icon on the task bar (left of the notification center) of your right bottom side of the screen.

14.    To switch between English and Amharic,  just click EN or AM and when the dialogue box pops out, select the language of your choice.
EN – English   AM – Amharic

Shorter Method
Click Start and write ‘Change keyboard’ on the search bar. This will bring many results of which one will be ‘change keyboard and other input methods’. Click it and this will take you directly to step 5 of the above procedure.