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Thunderbird text shortcut not functioning.

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  • Last reply by sfhowes

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In Thunderbird [Ctrl]+[B] doesn't initiate Bold text, in fact those keystrokes don't do anything at all. Any ideas as to why and how I can make this shortcut work? The other shortcuts for Italics and Underline work fine. Thank you for your time.

In Thunderbird [Ctrl]+[B] doesn't initiate Bold text, in fact those keystrokes don't do anything at all. Any ideas as to why and how I can make this shortcut work? The other shortcuts for Italics and Underline work fine. Thank you for your time.

All Replies (5)

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it works fine. The issue may be that you have other software that intercepts the shortcut.

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I'm running Windows 11 with Malwarebytes, MS Office 2010 and Firefox. I can't think what could be interfering with only that Keyboard shortcut and only in Thunderbird. It all worked fine on my last machine running Windows 10. Any ideas? Even a different set of keystrokes would be better than having to reach for the mouse every time I wanted Bold text.

If there's other software intercepting the shortcut keystrokes then it's not apparent as nothing else seems to happen when I try to use those keystrokes.

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Does the same thing happen in safe/troubleshoot mode (hold Shift when launching TB)?

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Yes, the same thing happens in safe/troubleshoot mode.

By the way, thanks to everyone for such a prompt set of replies for such a trivial problem. It would be nice to find out why this is happening and how to fix it, but I'm not in a rush, and I appreciate that you are all volunteers.

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It seems to be a common problem, sometimes tied to settings in Office or Chrome browser.

I don't know a general fix, (it works on my setup with neither Office nor Chrome), but there is a workaround using the tbkeys-lite add-on. In the attached picture, I've set Alt+B as a shortcut for bold text, in tbkeys settings. The picture also shows Alt+Z as a shortcut for strikethrough.

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