how to write the spanish letter N (enye) Windows 8 laptop

There is no number pad on some of the laptops and hence why the frustration of so many of us. Laptops without number pads used to have the numbers in the letters and activated them with the num lock function key. That is no longer the case. The only numbers we have are the ones on top. 

The Ctrl +shift +~ release then type n works on some programs but not when attempting to type on Chrome. This seems to work on sticky notes, word, Outlook, etc, everything but search engines.

Pulling the character map each time isn't ideal either.

Old thread, but since this is the top result on Google, I thought I'd add a helpful reply. This is for Windows 10 by the way.

There are 2 ways to do this. The first way is to right-click on language (i.e. ENG) in the system tray, then select "Show touch keyboard button". This will display a button which you can use to display a keyboard on screen. You can then use the mouse (or touchscreen if you have one) to press and hold on a character to display more options for that character, including ñ, ö, á etc. The second way is to install a language pack e.g. Spanish, and add the relevant keyboard. This will then give you direct access to the characters although the key mappings for your English keyboard will not be correct - for example ñ is ;

Hope that helps,

Owen

the alt plus #s do not work in Windows 8.1 It is driven crazy,  I am changing this computer for  an Apple.

That alt thing doesn't work with Windows 8.