How to use osk – onscreen keyboard to manage keyboard problems?

Had you ever been in a situation when a few keys on your keyboard stopped functioning, say when you had been drafting an important document or email to send ? What do you do to overcome this? Keyboard is a very vital PC peripheral and most cannot work on a PC, without a keyboard.Many expert PC users can survive without a mouse but not without a keyboard.However,it is quite common to suddenly find a few keys not functioning on a PC keyboard.But if you are using Windows OS on your PC,you can still overcome the keyboard failure and manage to send that all important document or email.Here are a few tips to manage your PC keyboard’s problems until you find/buy a new keyboard.

I am sure that many regular PC users would have faced keyboard failures.Either the whole keyboard or certain keys wouldn’t function.Quite often this happens to the frequently used keys,like those representing the vowels.First check whether the key is stuck.If so, release it and continue editing your document.If not,what should you do?

Your first priority will be to complete drafting the important document or email and send it.How do you accomplish this?

1. You can use the Ascii equivalent of English characters as suggested by keith here. Turn the Numlock “On”.Then type the ascii equivalent of the character, while pressing and holding the Alt key down.For eg, to print “A” on your document or email,press and hold the “Alt” key down and then type 65(ascii equivalent of “A”).But make sure that the Numlock is turned “On”.You can find an Alt code reference sheet here.

2. Here is an easier method to accomplish your task.Click “Start” –> “Run” and type osk. This will open an on-screen keyboard as shown below:

You can then use your mouse to click the characters you want to print on your document or email.If you need to print an upper case character,click shift and then click the alphabet you want to print.Now wasn’t that easy?

Note that the default typing mode in osk is “click to Select”.If you want a different typing mode,go to “Settings” –> “Typing mode” and choose either “Hover to select” or “Joystick or key to select”.

Once you are done sending your document or email,

 
Hope these tips would help to troubleshoot and manage your keyboard problems.