curlygirl8988

Q: Press and hold for accents function misplacing accented characters

Hi everyone,

 

In the past, I've had no problems using the "press and hold for accents" feature on mac--I often write in French and use it quite often. Lately when I use the feature, after holding a character and selecting the number corresponding to the accent I want, my mac will insert the character in the last place I inserted an accented character, replacing any character that followed the previous accented character. For example, if I wanted to type the sentence "Je suis allée à la piscine," after typing "je suis allée," I would next go to type "à." When I use the press and hold function to insert "à," instead of inserting it following allée, I would get this: "alléà." Note, it's not just eliminating a space or anything like that--it's actually replaced the second e. I can never find the missing character in the document when this occurs. Often, the last accented character will have been a few sentences ago, so it can get difficult to work out what's happened. It's really a pain, as I'm often working without looking at my typing and will only notice a paragraph later that I've interrupted another word and my sentences make no sense. I've noticed that this problem only tends to occur in Microsoft Word and not consistently--say about every seventh time I use an accent mark. I've done some searching online for solutions to this problem, but haven't found anything as of yet. Has anyone else had this problem or found a solution?

 

Thanks,

 

Kathleen

MacBook Air

Posted on Jul 1, 2016 5:27 AM

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Q: Press and hold for accents function misplacing accented characters

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  • by Tom Gewecke,Apple recommended

    Tom Gewecke Tom Gewecke Jul 1, 2016 9:44 AM in response to curlygirl8988
    Level 9 (79,247 points)
    Jul 1, 2016 9:44 AM in response to curlygirl8988

    curlygirl8988 wrote:

     

    I've noticed that this problem only tends to occur in Microsoft Word

     

    In that case, it would be best to also ask in the forum run by the maker of that product:

     

    http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/mac/forum/macword

     

    In particular, you should check the Word settings for spelling correction.  It doesn't use any Apple stuff in that area.

  • by BobbyBW,

    BobbyBW BobbyBW Jul 12, 2016 12:45 PM in response to curlygirl8988
    Level 1 (9 points)
    Jul 12, 2016 12:45 PM in response to curlygirl8988

    Hi. i had the same problem and even with the help of Apple we checked everything possible in the system. Even using terminal to turn on the pressandhold feature but nothing worked. i even reinstalled my OS X. in the end i discovered that my antivirus "webroot secure anywhere" has a feature called "secure keyboard entry" and this disables the pressandhold feature. As soon as i turned it off, I got back ny feature working.

     

    Hope this helps