Anna Slater Bee

Q: Can't insert Special Characters/Emoji/Symbols to any document

Since I updated to OSX Yosemite I can no longer insert Special Characters (now called "Emoji and Symbols") to any document: Word, Text Edit, Pages, Keynote etc. Double clicking the symbol doesn't do anything, drag and drop doesn't work and neither does copy and paste. Are there some settings I need to change?


Thanks

MacBook, OS X Yosemite (10.10.2)

Posted on Apr 24, 2015 3:35 AM

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Q: Can't insert Special Characters/Emoji/Symbols to any document

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  • by Tom Gewecke,

    Tom Gewecke Tom Gewecke May 8, 2016 5:56 AM in response to mittgenstein
    Level 9 (79,055 points)
    May 8, 2016 5:56 AM in response to mittgenstein

    mittgenstein wrote:

     

    i suddenly can no longer hold down a key and have special characters appear



    This is something else that webroot can do.

     

    But also try going to system prefs/keyboard/input sources and adding a Spanish or French keyboard to your list and restarting.

  • by Tom Gewecke,

    Tom Gewecke Tom Gewecke May 8, 2016 6:04 AM in response to mittgenstein
    Level 9 (79,055 points)
    May 8, 2016 6:04 AM in response to mittgenstein

    mittgenstein wrote:

     

    drag & drop works (as does copy/paste).

     

    That's good, at least you have a ways to input things.

     

    You might try setting up a new user account and seeing whether double-click works when you are logged into that.

  • by VikingOSX,

    VikingOSX VikingOSX May 8, 2016 8:58 AM in response to mittgenstein
    Level 7 (20,606 points)
    Mac OS X
    May 8, 2016 8:58 AM in response to mittgenstein

    In addition, I suddenly can no longer hold down a key and have special characters appear (e.g.: french accents or german umlaute such as à, ç or ä, ö, ü). instead the letter just repeats itself as long as i hold down the keyyyyyyyyyyyyyy - which is pretty annoying for someone who writes in different languages.

     

    Launchpad : Other : Terminal.

     

    Copy/paste the following into the Terminal and press return. This will restore the accented characters on a key press. When you are done, quit (command+Q) Terminal.

     

    defaults write -g ApplePressAndHoldEnabled -bool true

     

    Tom's suggestion about other languages is also useful.

  • by mittgenstein,

    mittgenstein mittgenstein May 8, 2016 9:33 AM in response to VikingOSX
    Level 1 (8 points)
    Notebooks
    May 8, 2016 9:33 AM in response to VikingOSX

    hello tom & viking, thanks for the replies!

    i tried tom's suggestion (since i saw it first) and am officially floored. not only did it bring back the hold-down feature (with the és and äs etc.), i can now also double-click on emojis again.

    apart from the fact that i never disabled any additional keyboard (actually i don't recall ever installing any), it is equally bizarre that i only installed the german keyboard but am now also getting french and norwegian (etc.) characters.

    i also don't quite understand how this could be linked to the emojis & special characters via drop-down menu (resp. control-command-spacebar).

    in any event: it did fix the problem (for now ;-)) but i am not sure if it solved 1 of many apple-mysteries...

    greetings!

  • by Tom Gewecke,

    Tom Gewecke Tom Gewecke May 8, 2016 12:09 PM in response to mittgenstein
    Level 9 (79,055 points)
    May 8, 2016 12:09 PM in response to mittgenstein

    mittgenstein wrote:

     

    i can now also double-click on emojis again.


    That is really interesting!

  • by elopez1,

    elopez1 elopez1 May 27, 2016 10:35 AM in response to Anna Slater Bee
    Level 1 (12 points)
    Mac OS X
    May 27, 2016 10:35 AM in response to Anna Slater Bee

    I have not read all the responses to this, but I fixed my problem by closing Parallels. I was running Windows 10 in Coherence mode.

  • by Tom Gewecke,

    Tom Gewecke Tom Gewecke May 27, 2016 11:47 AM in response to elopez1
    Level 9 (79,055 points)
    May 27, 2016 11:47 AM in response to elopez1

    elopez1 wrote:

     

    I have not read all the responses to this, but I fixed my problem by closing Parallels. I was running Windows 10 in Coherence mode.

     

    That's a new one!  Thanks for reporting it.

  • by elopez1,

    elopez1 elopez1 May 27, 2016 1:30 PM in response to Tom Gewecke
    Level 1 (12 points)
    Mac OS X
    May 27, 2016 1:30 PM in response to Tom Gewecke

    No problem!

  • by Scott Paine,

    Scott Paine Scott Paine Jun 17, 2016 3:16 PM in response to Anna Slater Bee
    Level 1 (39 points)
    Mac OS X
    Jun 17, 2016 3:16 PM in response to Anna Slater Bee

    I also still have this problem (El Capitan) and none of the suggestions so far fix it.

    • Yes, it's a problem with TextEdit and even Notes.
    • Yes, drag/drop work. Prior to reading this thread I didn't even know that was a feature! The only way I could get special characters was right-clicking in the viewer to copy character info, pasting it in, and deleting the text unicode stuff to leave only the character. So I'm happy even though the problem persists on my Mac!
    • No, I do not have Webroot installed.

    But…comments to this question that have to do with Webroot and Parallels got me wondering about Safari extensions possibly interfering with whatever bit of code manages the Special Character interface. So, I quit Safari and was immediately able to use the Emoji/Character UI for double-click insert.  

     

    So, it's something about my Safari setup. But after launching Safari now I can still do the special characters! So, it's something in my Safari setup that gets called later on…

     

    Try quitting Safari and then try double-clicking in the character viewer. Then see if it works after relaunching Safari. Obviously, this is not a fix, but a solid clue to an unsolved mystery… If (when) the problem reappears for me, I will troubleshoot Safari extensions one at a time and report back here.

  • by meermanr,

    meermanr meermanr Jul 11, 2016 6:13 AM in response to Anna Slater Bee
    Level 1 (4 points)
    Jul 11, 2016 6:13 AM in response to Anna Slater Bee

    I've noticed that the Emoji & Symbols dialog appears, but not next to my text cursor, and it doesn't point to where I'm about to enter a character. This suggests that it cannot determine where my text cursor is. This seems to happen is any application window on any screen is in "Secure Keyboard Entry" mode.

     

    In my case, it was iTerm2. I could either hide the iTerm2 window, or disable "Secure Keyboard Entry" using the main iTerm2 menu (top-left, by the apple logo, when iTerm2 has focus). Then the Emoji & Symbols dialog box appears next to my cursor just as expected, and works again.

     

    LEFT: (BAD) Emoji & Symbols dialog window when Secure Keyboard Entry is enabled in at least one application window.

     

    RIGHT: (GOOD) Emoji & Symbols dialog window without any applications using Secure Keyboard Entry. Note how it "points" at the location it is about to insert characters.

    Screen Shot 2016-07-11 at 14.08.04.pngScreen Shot 2016-07-11 at 14.08.18.png

  • by Tom Gewecke,

    Tom Gewecke Tom Gewecke Jul 11, 2016 6:29 AM in response to meermanr
    Level 9 (79,055 points)
    Jul 11, 2016 6:29 AM in response to meermanr

    To ask Apple to add the feature you want, go to

     

    http://www.apple.com/feedback

  • by SSPraise,

    SSPraise SSPraise Aug 3, 2016 9:14 AM in response to yami😁
    Level 1 (4 points)
    Aug 3, 2016 9:14 AM in response to yami😁

    Thank you so much! This solved the problem! After I updated my software, I suddenly couldn't get the emojis to work. Now I'm able to add them like I could in the past. I still have to double click, but I appreciate your posting this solution!

  • by amandahish,

    amandahish amandahish Aug 11, 2016 7:22 AM in response to Anna Slater Bee
    Level 1 (4 points)
    Aug 11, 2016 7:22 AM in response to Anna Slater Bee

    Got it finally! From any text field, press the Command, Control, & Space keys at the same time and then drag the Emoji!!!

  • by Tom Gewecke,

    Tom Gewecke Tom Gewecke Aug 11, 2016 7:29 AM in response to amandahish
    Level 9 (79,055 points)
    Aug 11, 2016 7:29 AM in response to amandahish

    amandahish wrote:

     

    From any text field, press the Command, Control, & Space keys at the same time and then drag the Emoji!!!

     

    You should be able to do that same thing via Edit > Emoji & Symbols.  Did that method not work for you?

  • by jaimecham,

    jaimecham jaimecham Aug 30, 2016 1:14 AM in response to Anna Slater Bee
    Level 1 (4 points)
    Aug 30, 2016 1:14 AM in response to Anna Slater Bee

    Ah, this has been bugging me *forever*, thanks to all the previous answers I was able to make it work:

     

    the way it seems work is if ANY application has "Secure Keyboard Entry" enabled, it breaks the Emoji & Symbols viewer dialog for ALL the other apps. In my case it was both Terminal and iTerm2 the guilty parties.

     

    After individually disabling it on these apps I was able to get the normal behavior back!     

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