Outlook help

March 2, 2005 1:58 PM

We use Outlook 2002 at work. The gentleman next to me refuses to learn Ctrl V to paste and would rather hit Alt+E, P. Recently, this stopped working for him. When he hits Alt+E it highlights Edit, but does not drop down the list. When I try it in my Outlook, it works fine. He says it stopped working a few weeks ago. I cannot figure out for the life of me what is wrong. Anyone?

Thank you for your assistance.

posted by mic stand to Technology (11 answers total)

Is his alt key physically sticking?
posted by orthogonality at 2:07 PM on March 2, 2005

check accesability options? i can't think what it might be, but perhaps something is turned on there that is making a difference?
posted by andrew cooke at 2:14 PM on March 2, 2005

check keyboard properties too, i guess (both these in control panel on win2k)
posted by andrew cooke at 2:16 PM on March 2, 2005

Best answer: The alt key sticking shouldn't cause that behavior. Accessibility options might. Or it could just be that Outlook got screwed up somehow. Does the same thing happen in Word? Notepad? If so, look for a system-wide issue; if not, it's Outlook.

A possible workaround: How does he feel about hitting the context-menu key (that one next to the right Windows key with a little menu and arrow on it on most keyboards), then the P key? That should have the exact same effect (he could also of course right-click and select Paste).

How hard is it to learn Ctrl-V, for heaven's sake, anyway? If he can learn Alt-E-P, then surely he can learn Ctrl-V.
posted by cerebus19 at 2:25 PM on March 2, 2005

I don't know, cerebus, it was only until I got a Mac, 9 months ago, that I started to get into the habit.. having always been a ctrl+insert/shift+insert guy from the old DOS days :-)
posted by wackybrit at 2:49 PM on March 2, 2005

Could it be that some other program recently installed uses that key combination?

Assuming the normal mapping of keystrokes to commands has been messed up, try to reassign the key combination to the paste function. This works in Outlook 2002 on a Windows XP machine:
1. Open an Outlook message. (I tried from the calendar view but the necessary button for step 3 below wasn't displayed. Maybe you have to be edited something.)
2. Select Customize from the Tools menu.
3. Click Keyboard.
4. Select Edit from the Categories list, then EditPaste from the Commands list.
5. In the "Press new shortcut key" field, show the key sequence you want to assign to that command by pressing Alt+E, then Alt+P.
6. Click Assign, then Close, Close.
posted by pracowity at 3:42 PM on March 2, 2005

Best answer: Check for another recently added menu item that also has E as the ALT key...
posted by krisjohn at 4:04 PM on March 2, 2005

Right click on the toolbar, then under "customize -- options," make sure "show full menus" is checked.
posted by words1 at 6:12 PM on March 2, 2005

I saw this once on a machine, and it turned out that a piece of spyware was hooking menus and not forwarding them properly. See what software he's installed in the past two weeks.
posted by brool at 11:57 PM on March 2, 2005

Response by poster: Thanks all. It looks like he accidently added an additional Send button on this Menu Toolbar. Since he already had a Send button on his Standard toolbar, it reassigned the the keystroke to being Alt+E. I removed added send button and all is now well.
posted by mic stand at 7:04 AM on March 3, 2005

Response by poster: move second 'the' to between 'removed' and 'added'. Glad this ain't on the blue, yo.
posted by mic stand at 7:10 AM on March 3, 2005