AltGr key not working
AltGr key does not work as intended, it currently only produces a Ctrl+Alt keypress. On many European keyboard layouts it is used to type e.g. characters @, [, {, |, \, ~, and currency symbols (€, $, £). The only way to circumvent this is to use e.g. Notepad to type in the characters and copy-pasting them, which is a nuisance. All the other Adobe CC apps - just as basically every other Windows app in the world - use AltGr as intended, so why does not Illustrator?
AltGr is supposed to be equivalent to Alt + ctrl.
At present, when we press e.g. AltGr + E while writing text, we check if any command can handle it and if yes it is not passed to application to handle key event. That’s why existing commands are triggered on those extended char shortcuts.
If we want to change the behavior that while writing text key shortcuts (e.g. AltGr + E) should write extended character, Then we will have to sacrifice all the text contextual shortcuts we have at present in app e.g. ctrl + alt + I does something. All those commands would stop working.
This is the reason why we are moving it to the feature
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t.hor commented
Please do sacrifice all the text contextual shorcuts. They are not as useful as being able to write. It is extremely uncomfortable that we have to copy the necessary characters from Notepad, one by one. Please ask the InDesign team how to do it, this problem is non-existent there.
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Minette Olson Hedin commented
Yes, this is a problem! On the Swedish keyboard the three most important symbols that used to work with AltGr that no longer work: The @, £, $ symbols. When will this be fixed? It is very frustrating!
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Alexander commented
How can this still be an issue after so many years?
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D03sN0tM4tt3R commented
This issue still kills my workflows... no €, no | symbol. Not even @ is working without a workaround!!
I hate every cent I have to pay to Adobe right now...
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MNDCANDY commented
I really dont need those commands... I need the € Symbol working as it does in every other app and OS out there!
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Emilio commented
Yeah I suffered for years with this problem. ¿Did you know in spanish we use question and exclamation marks to OPEN and close sentences? ¡That's a lot of copy and paste!
Then I bought a new notebook and issue was gone even with the same logitech wireless keyboard. The only obvious difference between the two computers is that the first had Windows 10 single language locked in portuguese.
So it maybe has to do with that windows localization. The "Allow each app window to have different input language" or something like that worked fine, although still intermitent problems.
Nevertheless, this is also an ILLUSTRATOR issue. How, otherwise, would you explain that Photoshop, After Effects and Indesign never had this problem?
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Sicilmedia commented
Same situation as Oskari described. I have Windows display language set to English (Spanish and Italian also installed and available), while keyboard input language set to Spanish (Spanish is also the only keyboard input language available for the other display languages).
I want to point out however the problem is not about Illustrator in general, but is restricted to the type tool only, in fact the "Alt Gr + key" combinations work correctly in the search filed of Illustrator to the top right and in the search field of the Keyboard Shortcut window of Illustrator.
Problem:
Type tool doesn't recognise any "Alt Gr + key" combination if the user's Windows display language and keyboard input language are not the same languages.Workaround 1 (Oskari):
Close Illustrator if open, switch your Windows display language to the same keyboard language you have set, open Illustrator, type tool now should recognise any "Alt Gr + key" combination.Workaround 2:
Close Illustrator if open, go to Windows "Advanced keyboard settings" and flag the option to choose different input languages for desktop applications (could be something like this: "let me set a different input method for each app window"). Open Illustrator, now you'll see that every time you switch between different applications (e.g.: Chrome) to Illustrator the language bar in the tasktray (available if you set it visible in Windows settings) will change automatically your display language. Type tool in Illustrator now should always recognise the "Alt Gr + key" combinations.The latter is better imo because it saves you from the burden to remember every time to switch display language before starting Illustrator.
Hope this helps and that it gets fixed asap.
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Sicilmedia commented
Same situation as described by Oskari, his/her solution worked for me! I have CC suite installed on Win10, Windows display language set to English (Spanish and Italian also installed and available), keyboard input language set to Spanish (only Spanish is installed for each display language).
I want to point out however that the issue is restricted to the type tool only and not to Illustrator in general, in fact going to the search field of Illustrator to the top right or to the search filed in the Keyboard Shortcut window of Illustrator the "Alt Gr + key" combinations will be recognised.
Problem:
The type tool in Illustrator doesn't recognise any "Alt Gr + key" combination when the Windows display language and the Keyboard input language are not the same languages.Workaround 1 (Oskari):
Close Illustrator if open, manually set the Windows display language equal to the keyboard input language (in my case Spanish - Spanish), start Illustrator, now type tool should recognise the "Alt Gr + key" combinations.Workaround 2:
Close Illustrator if open, go to the "Advanced keyboard settings" of Windows, flag the option to choose (override) the input method for any desktop application, start Illustrator, now you'll notice that whenever you move between any desktop application (e.g. Chrome) and Illustrator your language bar in the task tray will switch automatically from e.g. English - Spanish to Spanish - Spanish, and the type tool will recognise the "Alt Gr + key" combinations.With the latter you won't need to do it every time manually, thus saving yourself the burden to remember to switch display language before starting Illustrator.
Hope this helps and it gets fixed asap.
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Anonymous commented
This issue has been making me crazy for a while...
Solved this today using windows 10 Advance keyboard setting "override for default input method"
Language preferences->Spelling, typing & keyboard settings->Advanced keyboard setting->Override for default input method (and selecting the keyboard language i'm using=french)
Illustrator CS3 - Windows 10 64 bits
OS language setting is English with french keyboardit's working now @# and else are back no more copy paste!!!!!!
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Anonymous commented
Huge problem.
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Oskari commented
Here's a screen recording of the bug
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lqh0RjryPq8
As you can see, the characters work fine in Photoshop and text editor, but not in Illustrator.
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Oskari commented
Affects version 22.1 (64bit) on Windows 10 and most likely all Illustrator versions since fall 2016 when I first noticed and reported this problem.
I'm using Windows 10 (though I think I first had this problem with Windows 7) with Finnish (Nordic) keyboard but Windows language set to English. The problem is that if I have my input language set to English and keyboard set to Finnish when starting Illustrator, I can't type special characters that are behind Alt Gr button. These include at least @, £, $, € characters as well as {} and [] brackets.
If I change my input language to Finnish and restart Illustrator, the special characters work as expected, ie. by pressing Alt Gr + 2 for @, Alt Gr + E for € and so on.
Illustrator is the only program that does this. The special characters work fine in Photoshop, InDesign, Premiere, AfterEffects, Adobe XD, MS Office, Firefox, Chrome, Notepad and all the other software I've ever used, no matter what the selected Windows input language is, as long as my keyboard is set to Finnish / Nordic.
I believe this might be the case with following bug reports too:
Hope you can finally get this fixed soon!
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Oskari commented
There are also other issues regarding typing glyphs (at least) on a nordic keyboard; none of the glyphs that are behind Alt Gr work. These include characters like
@ (Alt Gr + 2)
£ (Alt Gr + 3)
$ (Alt Gr + 4)
{ } (Alt Gr + 7 & 0)
[ ] (Alt Gr + 8 & 9)I've reported this bug two or three Illustrator version ago but there is still no fix...
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Simon Bergman commented
Alt Gr + E now opens Export for screens. In Windows and in (at least) European countries this is the shortcut for the € symbol on system level as well as in virtually every other program. It used to wrok in Illustrator CS6.
Alt + Ctrl + E also opens Export for screens. It does not need two shortcuts, while it is unnecessarily time consuming to get the € symbol from the Glyphs library.
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Maria commented
Right alt key works like alt+ctrl so it's impossible to write using non-english characters - like polish, german or swedish diacritics. I see this problem was first reported in 2015 and STILL not fixed!