How do I use a custom keyboard layout created with Microsoft Keyboard Layout Creator in Windows 8?

Microsoft Keyboard Layout Creator (MSKLC) (v1.4) is not officially compatible with Windows 8. Some report that it works anyway but I cannot confirm that and there are other reports on the net that have the same problem. Because there seem to be several similar scenarios, let me be specific about the one I'm talking about here:

I'm on a Windows 8.1 machine (64 bit) and I have a custom keyboard layout created with MSKLC on my Windows 7 machine. When running the setup.exe on the Win8 machine, the keyboard layout seemed to install smoothly, just like on Win7.

The next step is to add the custom layout to whichever input language you want to use it with. That also works fine (although there is a foreboding because the preview doesn't work, it's greyed out). But the real problem comes after this: you wont find your new layout in the language bar and you wont be able to select it with the default keyboard shortcut Alt+⇧ Shift.

So the question is: is there a way to use the custom layout anyway?

Answer

Yes, there is a way to use the MSKLC custom layout in Windows 8.1. It's not more than a workaround, I'd say, but it works:

Go to Control Panel → Language → Advanced Settings

Under Switching input methods select Options and then Advanced Key Settings

Here you can assign a shortcut that directly activates your custom keyboard layout (in combination with a language, so if you want to use the same layout with different languages, you need one shortcut for each combination in order to swap between these).

BTW: I suspect that the reason, why some people report that MSKLC works with Windows 8 is that they have only one keyboard layout or one language installed so that the system automatically uses the custom layout and hence there is no need for all of the above.