Keyboard typing weird letters and symbols

After having the same problem with my Macbook Air were the keyboard would only type in symbols, I opened the screen keyboard and noticed that both option/alt keys where both being pressed down changing the keyboard to the symbols. I tuck the keys off and cleaned underneath but that did not work. I did notice that if I hold the 0 button down the letters appeared on the keyboard and I could type normally again. Which is a bit of a pain but you can still type when trying to search for things.

After searching on-line for hours i come across this program that allows you to customise your keyboard so I thought i'd give it a try. I installed it and everything works fine now. I don't know if this will work for everyone but hopefully it will help other and has fixed my problem for good. Here is the link to the program - https://pqrs.org/osx/karabiner/

Was go close to replacing the keyboard.

Alexxander Chadwick wrote:

In Microsoft Word

Select "Word" (upper left, next to apple)

Preferences > General > Uncheck "WYSIWYG font and style menus"

It's hard to imagine how this could do anything about the problem of your keyboard typing åß∂ƒ when it is supposed to be typing asdfg. Is that really the problem you had and fixed?

I've been experiencing this today, and it was a bit of a panic nightmare while I worried about viruses, drive failures and hacking attempts, I can tell you. But it's not any of that.

Symptoms included windows randomly closing each other to remain the only window open on the desktop, odd symbols instead of the letters pressed - such as å∫∂´ƒ rather than abcdefg and ¡€#¢∞ instead of 12345. And of course it prevented log-in attempts and in one case brought up a OS reinstall options at reboot.

The issue lies with the bluetooth keyboard, and removing the batteries and reinserting them temporarily cleared the problems. It's something to do with the alt option key being down, and I guess there's some dirt under one of those two keys.

Hint to self: If you don't own a corded keyboard yet, get one, because a) this, and b) there are power-up options you can't do with a bluetooth keyboard and one day you may need them.

Kiwigirl83 wrote:

Issues with the crazy symbols does not occur with and external keyboard

🙂

This is normally a good signal that the internal keyboard is damaged. I would go with that over what happened with your frankenstein.

I just had this problem. Main keyboard working fine but the symbols around the outside not typing what they should. When I checked in the keyboard settings I somehow had a Spanish keyboard installed (weird ... some random set of shortcuts I accidentally pressed?). I deleted the Spanish keyboard and set it back to British. Problem solved.

This is happening to me too but it’s on my phone. I tried changing the keyboard and creating a shortcut for the word and still nothing. Every time I type in the word “I” I get this I idk what’s going on.

Open System Preferences/Language & Text and set the first item to the Language you require.

I also started facing the same problem last week and tried all options still not working for me. Worst part is the numbers are also not typing so a cannot enter my wi fi password.

Did you get a fix

Reset the SMC as per the instructions in this Ap[ple document.

https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT201295

I had the same problem with my older apple keyboard a1048, in my case command key was stuck, so I took a knife and pulled it up. now everything is working fine.

In Microsoft Word

Select "Word" (upper left, next to apple)

Preferences > General > Uncheck "WYSIWYG font and style menus"

worked for me, cheers!

This fixed all the crazy typing that was going on. Thank you!!