Alt Keys Not Working In Windows 10

Posted on by cynmackley

One of our readers Steve was actually able to solve his own problem before I could come up with an answer. He wrote:  “This is just a general question. Do the Alt Codes work with Windows 10? By Alt Codes I mean the method to insert a special symbol in the text by holding down the left Alt button while typing in a set of numbers on the number keypad with the NumLock on. I cannot get Alt Codes to work on any three of my Win10 computers.”

I went looking for some solutions and found that several people reported having the issue. One guy said that he eventually discovered that a program he was suing had the option to suppress specific keys and use them for other purposes in that program. When he turned that option off, his ALT keys were working again.

But Steve found his own solution and kindly shared it with you.  First click on Settings.

Windows-10-settings-start-menu

Then  choose Ease Of Access
ease-of-access
Choose Mouse.
ease-of-access-mouse
Make sure “Use mouse keys when Num Lock is on” is turned off.
 use-mouse-keys
This solved Steve’s problem. Good job! Thanks for the tech tip.
~ Cynthia

0 thoughts on “Alt Keys Not Working In Windows 10”

  1. Thank you, microsoft in their stupidity keep breaking basic functions of an OS this has saved my bacon!

    Reply

  2. I had to turn the “Use mouse keys when Num Lock in on” setting off and then on again. That solved the problem of the Alt keys not working for me. Both of them are working perfectly again now that I did that. Hope this helps someone else. 🙂

    Reply

  3. Not sure what i did wrong, but i tried this and it is still not working. Tried every combination of on and off and still doesnt work.

    Reply

  4. Like for ‘me’ it is not working for me, any combination of on and off does not resolve the issue. Microwoft support doesn’t even know that new function, they keep saying it is a problem with your keyboard driver. Duh…

    Reply

  5. I found that none of the above things worked for me. What did work was to make sure that they numeric keypad was in numeric mode (Num Lock On) and then Alt- worked. If the numeric keypad is in Cursor mode then the Alt- produces nothing. This is a change in behaviour from Windows 7 when the special character is produced no mater which mode Num Lock is set to.

    Reply

  7. I had the same issue. Found the right arrow key was stuck down on my keyboard. Releasing that fixed it for me.

    Reply

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