A1314 Wireless Keyboard Issues

Hello there, Wull77!

Thanks for reaching out to the Apple Support Communities! It sounds like you are having issues with the keyboard. I know how important it is to be able to use the keyboard properly at all times. Check out this article with steps to help If your Apple wireless mouse, keyboard, or trackpad aren‘t working as expected. Specifically:

Your keyboard has one or more keys that don't respond

Use the Keyboard Viewer to test whether the keyboard keys are responding correctly when they are pressed.

1. Choose System Preferences from the Apple menu, then select Language & Text.
2. Select Input Sources.
3. Select the Keyboard & Character Viewer checkbox.
4. Enable the input source for the keyboard layout you're testing by selecting the checkbox next to it.
5. Make sure that "Show Input menu in menu bar" is enabled.
6. Choose Show Keyboard Viewer from the Input menu in the menu bar.
7. The Keyboard Viewer showing the keyboard layout appears on your display.
8. Type the key on the keyboard that doesn’t respond and see if the corresponding key highlights on the Keyboard Viewer. If it does, that key is functioning correctly.

Even though these steps are for keys not responding, they can help with issues like yours. Check out this article here: Try safe mode if your Mac doesn‘t finish starting up Even though the Mac is starting up, safe mode will help eliminate startup issues that could cause these situations you're having.

Starting up in safe mode

Follow these steps to start up into safe mode.

1. Start or restart your Mac.
2. Immediately after you hear the startup sound, press and hold the Shift key.
3. Release the Shift key when you see the Apple logo appear on the screen.

After the Apple logo appears, it might take longer than usual to reach the login screen or your desktop. This is because your Mac performs a directory check of your startup disk as part of safe mode.

To leave safe mode, restart your computer without pressing any keys during startup.

If you don't hear a startup chime after pressing the power key, see what to do if your Mac won't turn on.

If you're using FileVault

If your startup disk is encrypted with FileVault, you can still hold down the Shift key immediately after powering on your Mac to start up in safe mode. You might be prompted to log in twice as part of this process – first to unlock the startup disk, and a second time to log into the Finder. You can let go of the Shift key after you see the first login screen.

If those steps don't help, check and see if the issue happens with a Test user by following this article: How to test an issue in another user account on your Mac. The Test user will let you see if the issue is user specific or system wide.

Cheers!

Wull777 wrote:

On my A1314 Wireless keyboard the " and @ keys seem to have been transposed, some of the mathematical symbols don't work correctly and the hash key seems to have disappeared completely- can anyone help resolve ?

You have probably got the wrong keyboard layout active. Go to system preferences/keyboard/input sources and make sure that ONLY US or British is on your list.

(Having " produced instead of @ when you type shift 2 indicates that the British PC input source is being used, which is only appropriate for certain non-Apple keyboards. )

alex_oz wrote:

1. Choose System Preferences from the Apple menu, then select Language & Text.
2. Select Input Sources.

These instructions are for an old version of OS X. In El Capitan, there is no Language and Text, only Language and Region. And in Language and Region, there is no Input Sources. To find the latter you need to go to System Preferences/Keyboard. You should ask Apple to update that article these are taken from.

Problems involving keys producing characters other than what is printed on them are most often fixable by just changing the input source which is currently active.