My keyboard is all screwed up in Outlook.

April 7, 2006 1:48 AM

My keyboard is all screwed up in Outlook.

The letters are fine but none of the symbols match-up. The problem is only in Outlook - no other office programs. My keyboard is a spanish language set-up. I've searched online and can't find an answer.

Note: it's not DVORAK - the letters are all normal. It's just the symbols, accents, etc.

posted by BigBrownBear to computers & internet (3 comments total)

Try this:

Right click the taskbar at the bottom, select Toolbars->Language Bar. Then go into one of the applications where the symbols are correct (Excel, notepad, whatever). Click on the little language button in the language toolbar, and see what language it's set to. Then go into Outlook, and click that button again. It's likely that it will be set to some other language. Change it to the proper language (it's probably currently set to US english, if the spanish layout isn't working, but it could be something else too), and you should be good to go.

While you're at it, right click on the language bar, go to Settings, choose Key Settings under the Preferences group, and get rid of all those default Key Sequences (set them to none). I've had it happen to me occasionally (and I'm sure I've seen a previous AskMeFi question about it) where you hit those key sequences and change your language without realizing it.
posted by antifuse at 4:00 AM on April 7, 2006 [1 favorite]

KB819103: Keyboard Language Changes to a Different Language When You Start Microsoft Outlook. “This problem occurs when you have the Arabic or Hebrew Multilingual User Interface (MUI) components installed.”
posted by mpt at 4:14 AM on April 7, 2006

antifuse - that fixed it! I dont see the option to restore defaults, but i just deleted "traditional spanish" - what it was set at - and it is working fine now. Thanks!
posted by BigBrownBear at 4:15 AM on April 7, 2006