Left shift key MacBook Air gets special characters only

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PieterRvdW Author

Level 1

9 points

Left shift key MacBook Air gets special characters only

Hello there,

After I used special characters in my drive in Google Docs, the left key on my MacBook Air has a life on its own.

The left shift key only gets me special characters, doesn't shift the letter on the keyboard.

Example:

Lowercase: qwerty. When holding down the left shift-key it turns into: Œ„‰ÂÊÁ

Ío when È continue writing using the left shift-key È get unreadable sentences.

Èf there's anyone who can assist me with this È would be most grateful ·you see È'm using the left shift-key to give you an idea‚

MacBookAir 5.2

Catalina 10.15.7

13 inch mid 2012

I got this from a Dutch friend, so it's a Dutch version? It worked absolutely fine until I used my Google drive & docs to create forms.

thanks in advance,

Pieter

MacBook Air 13″, macOS 10.15

Posted on May 19, 2021 11:32 PM

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Answer 1

Best reply

genieen16

Community Specialist

May 20, 2021 5:42 PM in response to PieterRvdW

Hey there, PieterRvdW!

Welcome to Apple Support Communities! If we understand correctly, you're experiencing problems with the Shift key on your MacBook Air. We can understand your concerns. We will do all we can to help get this working correctly for you.

To start, check out this guide with information on How to reset the SMC of your Mac. If you follow those steps and still have the problem, you may also want to Reset NVRAM or PRAM on your Mac. These resets do not affect any of your data. They do reset some system and hardware memory. We hope this information helps you out.

Take care!

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Answer 2

genieen16

Community Specialist

May 21, 2021 10:46 AM in response to PieterRvdW

Pieter,

Thanks for returning to the Apple Support Communities with this information. We appreciate you trying these steps and will do all we can to further isolate the cause of this problem. To start, check out this link to learn How to identify keyboard localizations.

As it shows there, you can also use the Keyboard Setup Assistant to help see where characters are located on keyboards for various languages, including what characters are produced when using the shift and option keys. To get more information on the Keyboard Setup Assistant, check out this page: Specify a keyboard type on Mac.

Kind regards!

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Answer 3

genieen16

Community Specialist

May 25, 2021 4:17 PM in response to PieterRvdW

Pieter,

It sounds like you have tried quite a few of the resources that were offered to resolve this keyboard issue. If you're continuing to have the problem, you may want to Contact Apple for support and service with this keyboard issue.

Best wishes!

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Answer 4

PieterRvdW Author

Level 1

9 points

May 21, 2021 7:53 AM in response to genieen16

Hello too,

Unfortunately not helpful at all. (I wanted to select NOT helpful from the dropdown menu but I couldn't so now it shows it is helpful but it is not. Who designed this website?).

Did both suggestions but didn't work. Resetting the nvram did nothing, the laptop just started up as usual.

It did change my settings, typing this gets continuous grammar & spelling suggestions, although my language is set to English.

Would you happen to have other options?

Thanks,

Pieter

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Answer 5

PieterRvdW Author

Level 1

9 points

May 22, 2021 11:08 PM in response to genieen16

ˇhanks for replying again.

Sorry, ˆ followed all steps -no improvement. ˆt started to go wrong after ˆ used my ˝google drive to create a document with special characters.

ˆ check and double-check all sort of languages, select the keyboard that looks the same as the physical one on the ÂacbookÅir -no change, as you can see clearly when ˆ use capital letters with the left Íhift key.

Ío now ˆ switch back to my very old Cell with „windows 10. (Dell, Windows10). ˇhat works fine, smooth without any problems. Ío for the moment this overrated ÂÅcbokÅir will gather dust as it is completely useless.

ˇhanks for reaching out⁄

∏Peter

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Left shift key MacBook Air gets special characters only

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