Keyboard won't type in Excel

[Angelika & Rocky Mckinley]

Hi,

I have a Mac Mini with Leopard and Office 2004 with all updates on both. My
keyboard is a Microsoft "Natural Ergonomic Keyboard 4000v 1.0". I have
MicroSoft keyboard 6.2 software driver installed, I'm not sure if there are
any new updates for the keyboard or not.

The problem is in Excel I'll be typing and suddenly the keys strokes don't
yield any typing in the cells. Other applications seem fine.
Two things make the keys work again,
1) Toggeling the Num Lock key
2) Making another application active and then making Excel active again.

Has anyone else had this problem and if so what is the fix?

Thanx,
Rocky

 

[Gautam Sethi]

Hi,

I have a Mac Mini with Leopard and Office 2004 with all updates on both. My
keyboard is a Microsoft "Natural Ergonomic Keyboard 4000v 1.0". I have
MicroSoft keyboard 6.2 software driver installed, I'm not sure if there are
any new updates for the keyboard or not.

The problem is in Excel I'll be typing and suddenly the keys strokes don't
yield any typing in the cells. Other applications seem fine.
Two things make the keys work again,
1) Toggeling the Num Lock key
2) Making another application active and then making Excel active again.

Has anyone else had this problem and if so what is the fix?

Thanx,
Rocky

I have the exact same problem. I have to usually go to another
application and then type at least 1 character. When I return to
Excel, everything is fine for a while until the problem replicates
itself. Recently, MS Word has started doing the same thing. I have
Leopard and use Office 2004 for Mac.

 

[danielck]

I have been experiencing this issue as well. Excel seems to randomly stop accepting input. Functional keys work (e.g., arrow keys to move from one cell to another, the delete key, any key that is an action as opposed to a text input works), but text entry doesn't seem to work (letters or numbers). Functionality is temporarily restored by clicking outside of excel and then back into it. It's kind of random, but I've found a behavior where it nearly always happens for me. If I open the find window and type in a search term for something that won't be found a text not found dialogue pops up which I can clear by hitting enter, but I can't then replace the text in the find dialogue box until I click out and back in. I've seen this issue posed on Apple discussion forum as well.

 

[Cno]

Try Control + Shift + Clear. Worked for me

 

[kukubean]

I am having the EXACT same problem, but mine comes with an extra special bonus: while working in Excel and dealing with non-responsive cells - my ENTIRE laptop will randomly re-boot mid work flow. We're not talking "unexpected crash"...we're talking total restart. This seems to be triggered "around" the time I am copying and pasting. Any idea why this is happening? Anyone else experience random re-booting? Is this a Leopard + Office 2004 problem?

HELP! HELP! HELP!

 

[JE McGimpsey]

I am having the EXACT same problem, but mine comes with an extra special
bonus: while working in Excel and dealing with non-responsive cells - my
ENTIRE laptop will randomly re-boot mid work flow. We're not talking
"unexpected crash"...we're talking total restart. This seems to be triggered
"around" the time I am copying and pasting. Any idea why this is happening?
Anyone else experience random re-booting? Is this a Leopard + Office 2004
problem?

I could be mistaken, but by first reaction is that it's got to be an
OS/hardware problem. OS X is designed to prevent an application taking
down the entire system, much less cause a reboot.

It's certainly not something I've ever seen or heard of with Leopard and
Office 2004.

 

[danielck]

I have had similar crashing problems, though they are somewhat rare, maybe once every other week. Just today while working in Excel the spinning beachball came up and although I could move the mouse around, I couldn't click away from Excel to bring any other app to the front and it just sat there until I had to hold down the power key to force a restart. As I said, it doesn't happen often, but it does happen. Most times there is a recovered document waiting for me after reboot that is up to date with where it crashed, making me wonder whether it might be something with autosave.

 

[Pat McMillan]

With regard to the problem of keyboard input stopping to work, for those
encountering it, could you send me a system profile? I've seen a lot of
reports of this, but the only consistent thing in the threads is 2004 +
Leopard. Since we've done a fair amount of testing on that configuration and
not seen this problem, there's got to be something else about the
configuration that's causing this. Please send any system profiles to
(e-mail address removed).

Thanks,

Pat

 

[CyberTaz]

Hi Pat -

FWIW, I have 2004 installed on my MBP in Leopard 10.5.0 & haven't witnessed
this either. However, it seems to me that Apple has been releasing an
unusually high number of "Firmware Updates" [one of which is specifically
for MB, MBP Keyboard] as well as what they're calling "Firmware Restoration
CD"'s. Is it possible that some of this might be attributable to the
affected systems or the updates themselves?

Regards |:>)
Bob Jones
[MVP] Office:Mac

 

[Pat McMillan]

Hi Bob,

Yes, that's entirely possible. Unfortunately, we don't have a reproducible
case in house yet, so we're unable to investigate this.

Thanks,

Pat

Hi Pat -

FWIW, I have 2004 installed on my MBP in Leopard 10.5.0 & haven't witnessed
this either. However, it seems to me that Apple has been releasing an
unusually high number of "Firmware Updates" [one of which is specifically
for MB, MBP Keyboard] as well as what they're calling "Firmware Restoration
CD"'s. Is it possible that some of this might be attributable to the
affected systems or the updates themselves?

Regards |:>)
Bob Jones
[MVP] Office:Mac

With regard to the problem of keyboard input stopping to work, for those
encountering it, could you send me a system profile? I've seen a lot of
reports of this, but the only consistent thing in the threads is 2004 +
Leopard. Since we've done a fair amount of testing on that configuration and
not seen this problem, there's got to be something else about the
configuration that's causing this. Please send any system profiles to
(e-mail address removed).

Thanks,

Pat

 

[Tom McCaleb]

I bought a MacBook Pro in December. I am running Leopard and Office 2004 and I too am experiencing the problem with Excel (and very occasionally Word) not accepting keyboard input in mid-stream. It is happening frequently. I click in outside Excel in the Finder window and back in the cell in Excel that I was working in, and everything works fine (for a while). I use the same Office version on my iMac desktop but running Tiger with no problems. It can only be a MacBook Pro hardware problem or a Leopard problem. It seems to me it is Mac's responsibility to fix it and not shuffle people off on Microsoft. I have been a Mac diehard for over 20 years, but this is getting tiresome as is Mac's lack of response to the problem.

 

[Pat McMillan]

Hi Tom,

We suspect the issue you're experiencing is caused by an OS issue too, but
we haven't been able to confirm that yet. I've been collecting system
profiles from customers who have been experiencing this in the hopes that I
can identify a common thread (besides just the fact that this has only been
reported on Leopard so far). If you could send me a system profile, I would
really appreciate it. Just select About this Mac... from the Apple menu,
then click More Info..., Save the file in the default format, and send to me
at (e-mail address removed).

Thanks,

Pat

 

[Phillip Jones]

I have two different Mac's a G4-500 with 1.5 GB RAM and a PowerBook 17
(1.67GB speed) 2 GB Ram.

I've never had the keyboard just stop typing.

I have both Office 2008 and 2004.

There is an adjustment in the system for keyboard typing speed maybe its
set too low.

Hi Tom,

We suspect the issue you're experiencing is caused by an OS issue too, but
we haven't been able to confirm that yet. I've been collecting system
profiles from customers who have been experiencing this in the hopes that I
can identify a common thread (besides just the fact that this has only been
reported on Leopard so far). If you could send me a system profile, I would
really appreciate it. Just select About this Mac... from the Apple menu,
then click More Info..., Save the file in the default format, and send to me
at (e-mail address removed).

Thanks,

Pat

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[Brandon Davies]

I am also have this problem, mostly in Excel. Sometimes I can use Excel for 30 minutes or more without an issue. Sometimes it seems the problem happens after a single keystroke. It is incredibly annoying, though I am getting proficient at clicking on another application and then switching back to Excel. None of the Mac Updates from Apple have improved the problem at all. When I first upgraded to Leopard I don't remember having this problem, but now it happens with incredible frequency. I've never had the whole system crash though. I'll send in a system profile

 

[Pat McMillan]

Thanks Brandon. I got your system profile. I've been doing some further
investigation of this and I'm beginning to think this is an OS issue. I've
seen reports around the web of this happening in lots of different apps
besides Excel (and Word and Entourage). It does seem to be more common in
Excel than others, though. I've collected about a dozen system profiles so
far, and they're all for machines with Intel processors. This could indicate
a Rosetta bug on Leopard.

If anyone has ever encountered this bug on a PPC-based Mac on Leopard, I
would really love to know. In the meantime, I'm going to post a bug with
Apple and see what they have to say. (This isn't to say that this is
definitely an Apple bug, but that way both Apple and MS will be able to
investigate it on their own tracks.)

Thanks,

Pat

 

[David_Bagby]

Pat,
I'm the Tech Support for my college at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

I'm here to report this problem on two Intel Mac Minis under BOTH 10.4.11 and 10.5.3. I thought upgrading from Tiger to Leopard (Archive & Install) might fix it, but it didn't. 10.4.11 is the only version of Tiger I saw the problem on; my users don't know if it occurred under earlier versions.

After the Leopard upgrade didn't help, I deleted Office 2004 and reinstalled: Delete the MS Office folder from Applications; remove the Microsoft User Data Folder; delete all preferences iwth the following in the name: ms, microsoft, office, word, excel. Then I installed Office 2004 from our original install CD, and ran MS Autoupdate until it reported no more updates.

Didn't help.

The issue manifests as follows: can't type characters or use Tab key. Sometimes the user can recover by clicking on a different cell and back. Sometimes that causes Excel to crash (application stops running and disappears from the screen).

Three times today, it shut the computer off entirely. The user had to boot up again. We've check the computer; no hardware issues found, and it is entirely stable in all other applications.

I will send System Profiles from the two minis. Unfortunately I only have Leopard Profiles; I didn't run System Profiler while the computers still had Leopard on them.

Thank you for your interest and support on this!

Thanks,

David

 

[Pat McMillan]

Thanks for the report, David. I've replied to your offline mail to me too,
but for the benefit of the group:

We have investigated this and believe it is a problem with Apple's Rosetta
emulation software for running non-native applications on Intel. We've
collected dozens of system profiles from customers reporting this and all
have been on Intel Macs. We've also seen reports online of this type of
problem happening with other applications besides Mac Office.

We've reported this to Apple and have provided them all the information we
have on it. It would be really helpful if you could report it to them as
well.

Thanks,

Pat