5 Ways to Fix Windows 10 Keyboard Special Characters Not Working

5 Ways to Fix Windows 10 Keyboard Special Characters Not Working

Did you have trouble entering an email ID on your Windows 10 computer? For example, the email ID did not include the rate symbol (@). Instead, there was a completely different symbol. Several attempts fail to change it. It can be frustrating. We will therefore explain to you how to solve the problems when the special characters on the Windows 10 keyboard do not work.

You may be asking yourself, “Is my computer hacked?” The answer is no. The problem occurs if the keyboard is locked or if it selects the wrong keyboard language. This is why the keyboard enters the wrong special characters. This mainly occurs with special characters like at (@), double quotes (‘’) and tilde (~).

Let’s see the answer to the cause of the problem and how to solve the problem of changing keyboard symbols in Windows 10.

1. Restart your computer

If the problem only occurred once, start by restarting your PC. This simple solution could come to your rescue.

2. Check NumLock

If your keyboard comes with a NumLock key, you may want to use it to troubleshoot first. You may have forgotten to deactivate the digital lock. And what’s going on, the characters won’t work. Press the NumLock button several times on your keyboard to check if the light or it goes out or turns on. Then try to enter special characters.


Windows 10 keyboard special characters don't work 14

3. Change the keyboard language

The bad special characters problem usually occurs when you change the language or the keyboard layout. You could have done it intentionally without knowing that it would create problems. However, sometimes it also happens accidentally. When you press the ALT + SHIFT keys on your keyboard, it changes the keyboard language. This now poses a problem if the language set does not match the layout of your keyboard.

If you have a QWERTY keyboard and choose a different keyboard layout in the language settings, problems will arise. Likewise, if you have a different keyboard layout and select QWERTY in the language settings, you will be faced with the problem again. Thus, the layout of the keyboard language used in the settings must be the same as that of your keyboard.

To change the keyboard language and format, do the following:

5. Check the keyboard driver

If the problem persists, you should try to update or uninstall the keyboard driver. Start by updating, and if that doesn’t work, uninstall the driver.

For that, proceed as following:

Step 1: Right-click on the Start menu icon and select Device Manager.


Windows 10 keyboard special characters do not work 9

2nd step: Expand Keyboards. Right click on your keyboard. First, select Update Driver. Restart your PC. Then check if the problem is resolved. If it continues, select Uninstall driver. Then restart again. Wait a moment and your system will install the keyboard driver itself. Then try to enter special characters.


Windows 10 keyboard special characters do not work 10

Other way: enter special characters without keyboard

If the problem persists and you have an important job where you have to type special characters, another method exists. Open Windows search and enter the character table. Open the app.


Windows 10 keyboard special characters do not work 11

Then copy and paste the characters from the Character Map application into your required document.


Windows 10 keyboard special characters do not work 12

Highlight the particularity

We don’t realize the importance of special characters on the keyboard unless they stop working. And when that happens, hell is unleashed. We hope the above methods would have solved the special character issues that were not working on your Windows 10 computer.

Then:

Sometimes updating Windows PC also solves various problems. Here’s a guide to updating Windows 10 offline from the following link.

Last updated on February 17, 2020

Leave a Reply