Option+Shift+Left/Right won't select text

[jim]

Ordinarily Option+Shift+Left/Right will allow you to select text a word at a time, but this no longer functions. I can select text a letter at a time (Shift+Left/Right), skip forward or backward in text a word at a time (Option+Left/Right), and use other text selection combinations (e.g., Cmd+Shift+Left/Right; Shift+Up/Down). All of the keys work fine in every other context, but this one combination doesn't work. It doesn't matter which Option or Shift keys are used; I've tried every combination to no avail. The cursor doesn't respond at all. This is persistent across all applications.

I've searched high and low and can't find a solution for this, and none of my own tinkering with keyboard or accessibility settings has made a difference. Given that I work with text and code all day, this slows my workflow down considerably and is incredibly annoying. Please help!

I'm on a Mac Book Pro Retina (Mid 2012) running OS X 10.8.4, in case it matters.

 

[Kaveman]

Ordinarily Option+Shift+Left/Right will allow you to select text a word at a time, but this no longer functions.

Works fine on my iMac.
Check System Preferences > Keyboard > Keyboard Shortcuts

 

[jim]

I can't find any single setting that seems related. Even so, I've reset everything to defaults; I never intentionally changed any settings, but I figured it couldn't hurt. Alas, no results.

 

[jim]

I ended up uninstalling everything I'd installed that wasn't essential for doing my job, and that did the trick. I wish I'd kept a list of programs in case anyone else runs into this in the future. Oh well. Hindsight and all.

 

[Spawn_Dooley]

Thanks for getting back to us anyway

 

[jim]

I used App Cleaner to uninstall the various programs, and I just realized that it put everything in the trash bin instead of completely erasing it. Here are the programs I uninstalled:

• ArtRage 4 Demo
• PivotalBooster
• Skim (PDF Reader)
• Spotify
• Spotify Menubar
• TextWrangler

My money is on the Spotify Menubar being the culprit. It was shoddy all around.

 

[Kaveman]

I've got ArtRage so its not that.

 

[oldscribe]

Hi,

I have Textwrangler had for a long time no issues at all.