0 Replies Latest reply: Dec 1, 2014 11:14 AM by New_Light_Photo RSS

    CTRL, SHIFT keys, shortcuts on keyboard not working

    New_Light_Photo Community Member

      I wanted to share my problem that drove me crazy for 2 days - and the very simple solution I eventually found.

       

      My keyboard shortcuts in Photoshop and Illustrator stopped working properly.  The CTRL key and the SHIFT key were not working as expected, the left ctrl key would activate shortcuts but the right ctrl key would not.  (For example, CTRL [+] usually zooms in on the image, but in this case that was only working with the left side CTRL key and not the right.)

       

      Suggestions from "official" sources hinted that I was using a stolen copy of PS, or that I needed to reset all my preferences, or even uninstall and re-install the software.  Frankly I was a little offended by those ideas, my computer is new and kept very clean and my software is licensed so I couldn't see a good reason why I should need to take heroic steps to fix it. 

       

      Finally I found A VERY EASY thing to check:  do you have multiple language settings for your KEYBOARD?

       

      Most of the time my keyboard operates as "US English" - but I live in Canada, and recently with an update the computer changed that to "Canadian Multilingual Standard".  This makes some of the keys not work as expected - for example the right-side "CTRL" key is now used to add accents to letters, and the "/?" key produces a "É".  Changing this setting back to "US English" completely solved the issue and was very easy to do.  (On my Windows machine, this is an option in the small tray at the bottom right of the taskbar).

       

      I hope this helps someone out and saves a lot of grief!  I also hope this turns up in Google searches because my searches didn't ever turn this one up.