Quick tip: Troubleshoot non-typing keyboard in Outlook 2007 (or else, why can’t I type in Greek, Slavic, Russian, etc.)

This is one of those things that happen once and leave you bewildered. Not being able to type in an email when, up to that point, Outlook was your faithful companion. What could have happened that changed all that?

It appears that, although Outlook add-ins come in various flavours, some times, they do mess up a little bit.

What am I going on about? Imagine this scenario: you get an email from your international friend, you open it up, read it alright and then hit on Reply. You start typing but… although you hit the keys on your keyboard, nothing appears on the screen. You try changing the language back to English and the application is happy to comply. You’re able to type in English; you’re not allowed to type in any other language.

What’s even funnier is that, if you hit on ENTER and then start typing really fast, in your international language, you will notice that the letters do appear on the screen. If you pause, or if you click on “;” which, in the Greek stands for stressing the vowels, they keyboard will stop typing again.

It’s like your PC is possessed only it’s not.

It appears that, although ODIR is a little gem and performs a really marvelous job with deleting duplicate items, it somehow messes up Outlook to the point that it will only accept English characters to be typed in.

In order to restore functionality, you will need to visit Control Panel > Add or remove programs. Uninstall the ODIR add-in and your Outlook will once again perform as expected.

If you don’t have ODIR installed, there have been reports that other 3rd party add-ins have the same effect on Outlook. Try disabling your add-ins and then re-enabling them one after the other till you identify your culprit.

Hope that helps.

PS: For more information and relevant cases, please visit  the dedicated posts in office-outlook.