Issue sony vaio : greater than (>) and less than (<) french keyboard

There appears to be no keys on a physically QWERTY keyboard that are mapped to < or > under Windows' AZERTY layout. So the answer basically is, there are no such keys.

If you had a Num Pad on your keyboard, you could use AltNum 6,Num 0 and AltNum 6,Num 2 respectively for < and >, but since it's a laptop, it most likely doesn't have a Num Pad.

There is a geeky solution for this, however. Just ten steps that you can follow. It shouldn't take more than 20 min of your time.


  1. Download AutoHotkey program installer from the official site. It's free.
  2. Install the program. Choose "Express installation" because "Custom installation" can be confusing. Leave the installation options to their defaults.
  3. After the program is installed, you need to create an AutoHotkey script. Before that, go to your documents folder and create a folder with the name AutoHotkey Scripts. The location or the name of the folder don't matter, what does matter however is that it should not be deleted as long as you want the keys to work.
  4. Open that folder you've created, right-click on the empty space, and choose New > AutoHotkey Script. A new file is created inviting you to pick a name for it. For example, name it Angle Brackets (don't change or remove the file's extension!).
  5. Right-click on the created file and choose Edit Script.
  6. A Notepad window should appear. Add the following text after the text that is already there.

    !+1::Send <
    !+2::Send >

    so that the last three lines look like this:

    SetWorkingDir %A_ScriptDir% ; Ensures a consistent starting directory.
    !+1::Send <
    !+2::Send >

    What this scary text means is that < and >, which are called angle brackets, are going to be mapped to AltShift1 and AltShift2 respectively.

  7. In the Notepad window, go to the File menu and click Save. You may now close Notepad.

  8. Right-click on the Angle Brackets file again and this time choose Run Script (or simply double-click the file).
  9. Now, the key combinations for < and > should have been activated, so let's test them. Open any text editor and try whether AltShift1 and AltShift2 work.
  10. It's not over yet because you need these key combinations to be activated on every Windows startup. Create a shortcut to the Angle Brackets file by right-clicking on it and clicking Create shortcut. A shortcut is created with a little arrow in its icon. Now, click the Windows' Start button, click All Programs, right-click the Startup folder, and then click Open. Drag the created shortcut from the window of the AutoHotkey Scripts folder into the window of the Startup folder.

By repeating steps from 5 to 7 (but this time editing existing text, not adding lines) you can change the key combinations to any key combinations you prefer. In the two lines you added to the script, look at the text that appears before ::Send. Here is what it means:

  • ! symbol stands for the Alt key
  • + symbol stands for the Shift key
  • 1 stands for the 1 key and 2 stands for the 2 key

You can edit the key combinations by changing, adding, or removing their respective symbols. For example, if you would prefer A insted of 1, you would replace 1 with a. Other symbols/keys you could use are:

  • ^ symbol, which stands for the Ctrl key
  • # symbol, which stands for the Win key

Whenever you change the text in Angle Brackets file, you should find the AutoHotkey icon in the Windows Tray, which looks like a green square with an "H" in it, right-click on it, and click Reload This Script (if you aren't able to find the "H" icon in the Tray, try double-clicking the Angle Brackets file).