Keyboard Issue: Typing Works Sporadically

[SalDog]

I have a client who is having a weird issue with Excel and typing.
Here's the situation.

The office is about 13 people working on with a mixture of iMacs (4)
and MacBook Pros (9). The excel files are located on an XServe and
hosted locally via AFP. All machines are running Microsoft Office
2004 (latest version) and Mac OS X 10.5.5. The server is running OSX
Server 10.5.5. The issue two of the MacBook Pro users are having is
sporadic keyboard functionality in Excel. Don't know if it really
matters but these two MacBook Pro machines are using screen sharing
(extension) with a 20" Dell monitor as their main display and using a
full size USB keyboard and mouse which is plugged directly into the
MBP.

Situation: The user will have an active spreadsheet open and working
on the 20 inch screen (Dell). Safari, Entourage, and Real Player will
be on the 15" MBP screen. While in Excel, the user will do a Command
F to find some text. The Find dialog box appears but they when they
try to type in the search field no text appears. The mouse is fully
functional. If they try typing the text from the MacBook Pro keyboard
there is no difference. If we replace the keyboard - no difference.
If we install a Bluetooth keyboard - no difference.

The mouse has no problem at any time. If the mouse is moved to Safari
and click into the Google search field the typing works. All
programs besides excel work great with keyboard typing. When they go
back to Excel the typing capability might work or might not. This
issue is happening sporadically. Again, if they click out of Excel
the typing works great - going back into Excel is 50/50 on having it
work again. The sporadic typing isn't limited to the search field it
can happen at anytime in Excel and last quite a while. One in a while
Excel will quit (not often).

The customer is getting really frustrated. The MBP he is using is a
brand new 15-inch MacBook Pro (purchased 10.3.08) and I did a clean
install of MS Office 2004 (and updated to latest build). Any help
would be greatly appreciated. Thanks so much.

 

[Pat McMillan]

Do any of the Macs have PowerPC processors, or are they all Intel? If
they're all Intel Macs, I'm guessing that this is a problem we've seen in
Rosetta on Leopard that we've investigated and believe is an Apple bug.
We've posted a bug with them. If you are finding that it happens on PPC Macs
too, though, please let me know and we can investigate further.

Thanks,

Pat McMillan
(e-mail address removed)

 

[Christopher Long]

I am having similar problems to those described above. Since upgrading to 10.5.5, I have had problems with Word 2008 (12.1.3) running on my 15in MacBook Pro. The keyboard will freeze at times while I am using Word. An external mouse and keyboard always works, but this is very frustrating. Any suggestions would be welcome.

 

[ianmac47]

I'm having a similar problem with a Mac Pro tower (intel duel core intel
xeon). I am also set up to run with two monitors.

Entering data into excel cells will sometimes stop working spontaneously;
the only way to begin entering text again is to click to another program
window, and then go back to excel. Most of the time I can only get off a
dozen characters in excel before it stops working. I keep hoping that the
software will be corrected with an update. Please don't pass the buck to
Apple. Make it work.

 

[Pat McMillan]

We've reported the bug to Apple and have provided them with a lot of
information on it (much of it directly from participants in this forum).
We're not in the habit of fixing their bugs, just as they're not in the
habit of fixing ours. There are other reports of the same problem in other
non-Microsoft applications. Have you contacted Apple about this?

Thanks,

Pat

 

[Juankagz]

I found this tip in a Mac Forum, Go to Preferences in Excel, Edit and uncheck
the box Cut, copy, and sort objects with cells. Let me know if it works.

 

[jpblanchard]

I was having the same problem. Try restarting in Safe Mode (hold down shift key on startup until Apple icon appears) and see if problem persists. My problem was solved when I tried this so it was obvious that it was one of the various applications that open automatically at Login. I systematically turned them off one at a time (System Preferences -> Accounts -> Login Items) until I found the culprit. In my case, it was a helper application called PopChar which is a shortcut for entering various symbols into character strings. If you are using PopChar, remove it from the Login Items list (highlight it and press the minus key) and use "Finder -> Special Characters" instead.

 

[Grey_Fedora]

Try turning off "edit directly in field" in preferences.