How to get French and Spanish characters in calc sheets

I’m in Ubuntu, 10.04 I believe, and have a rather small English keyboard. I want to make a table of French expressions with English and Spanish translations. There was a previous question on this topic, and wanted to add a further question, but the topic was CLOSED for some reason I can’t fathom. The answers were complex, recommended using a French keyboard and/or involved keyboard re-configurations that used some AltGr key that my keyboard doesn’t seem to have. They also mentioned the menu Insert->Special Character, but I have no idea what Subset to choose; there are many, and the ones I found to have the French accents are all capitals. I’ve spent many hours already researching this on the Internet, but nothing works for me, for one reason or another.

Hello @DanW58,
Can you edit your question and share the topic number? Thanks.

Not a physical keyboard, but a French keyboard layout. The keyboard layout is an OS (or desktop environment) configuration (YaST, may be?). This will change which symbol “appear” when you press each key. You can configure to switch between various keyboard layouts with a shortcut.