Opening an application while pressing the shift key

Recently, Microsoft Word 2011 failed to open and showed the message, "Microsoft Word has encountered a problem and needs to close." I followed troubleshooting instructions on the Microsoft website. Nothing cured the problem, but creating a new user account did enable Word 2011 to open normally. That seemed to imply that "a corrupt user account" was causing the problem. I could not find any instructions about how to repair that, but at some point I came across the suggestion to "hold the shift key down and click on the Word icon in the dock." I did this and Word opened normally in my account. After this, Word opened normally without holding down the shift key. Apparently this fixed the problem.
My question is, what does pressing the shift key do while you open an application? What's different? Why did it work? What's special about the shift key in this situation?
Thanks.

It may be something specific to Word/Office. Individual applications may accept different launch arguments passed to them via key combinations, such as holding the Option key when launching iTunes to invoke the option for choosing the library to use.

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In iTunes click on 'Edit', then 'Preferances', Click on the 'Advanced' button, change the entry in the 'iTunes media folder location' to point to your external drive.

The pressing the Shift key to make a capital letter kicks me out of gmail or reloads the current web page

I'm suddenly getting some strange behavior on my Windows 7 PC. (I can hear all you Linux users formulating witty retorts...don't do it! :-). When I'm composing an email in Gmail and press the Shift key to get caps, it kicks me out of the composition page. And nothing is saved in drafts either. Internet Explorer doesn't have this issue. The Shift key works normally. Also, If I try to paste using Ctrl+V it make the webpage text shrink. I was trying to log this issue on the computer with the problem but I couldn't login because of the caps and the paste issue.
I just discovered another quirk: If I press the Ctrl key without the +V it still shrinks the text.

Hi Matt,
Thanks for the suggestion, but there's no option to uninstall a driver. It's a MS Ergonomic 4000 keyboard and it just shows up as an HID compliant device. I tried uninstalling the Microsoft Mouse & Keyboard Control Center, but that didn't help either.
I've also pressed the keys numerous times (at one point it asked me if I wanted to enable 'Sticky Keys' which I didn't). Rebooted too. Even deleted the user profile, removed the PC from the domain, rejoined it to the domain, logged in as the user, and restored a previously backed up Transfer Wizard profile. And I checked while logged on as the local Admin and got the same weirdness.

When I compose an email it flies up the screen when I press the shift key. I've clicked default settings on Keyboard in Preferences but it has made no difference. It has only just started happening.

When I compose an email it flies up the screen when I press the shift key and then comes back again. I've clicked default settings on Keyboard in Preferences but it has made no difference. It has only just started happening. Any ideas?

This problem has also been plaguing me today. Here are my specifics and how I solved it (Expanding on what Quentin Holmes mentioned)
CONFIRMED WORK AROUND! The .m4v file gets created while encoding, but Adobe Media Encoder does not re-pack it back into the .mp4 unless you select the "Export Audio" in Adobe Premier export prior to queuing. If you don't want audio, mute the individual tracks and still export audio.
My details:
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Reset the page zoom on pages that cause problems: <b>View > Zoom > Reset</b> (Ctrl+0 (zero); Cmd+0 on Mac)
See:
* http://kb.mozillazine.org/Zoom_text_of_web_pages

I can't get a capital c when I press the shift key, but I can get one with the with the caps lock key. Help

I can't get a capital c when I press the shift key, but I can get one with the with the caps lock key. Help

Hi
How its going?
I understand that you are not able to get the capital letter c.
I want you to change the keyboard and if you have got the warranty please replace at no charge.
Chetan

Problem while pressing the L key

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Hmm
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http://kb.mozillazine.org/Keyboard_shortcut_registry_for_extension_authors_%28Firefox%29
https://support.mozilla.com/en-US/kb/Keyboard+shortcuts
edit: fixed first link.

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Knowing whether the user is pressing the Shift key

How can I tell whether the Shift key is currently pressed?
I don't need to know when it's pressed. Instead, at an arbitrary point, i want to know whether the Shift key is pressed.
Thanks,
Eli

Try the following code:
import java.awt.AWTEvent;
import java.awt.BorderLayout;
import java.awt.Toolkit;
import java.awt.event.AWTEventListener;
import java.awt.event.ActionEvent;
import java.awt.event.KeyEvent;
import javax.swing.AbstractAction;
import javax.swing.JButton;
import javax.swing.JFrame;
import javax.swing.JLabel;
import javax.swing.SwingUtilities;
public class ShiftTest implements AWTEventListener {
    public static void main(String[] args) {
     SwingUtilities.invokeLater(new Runnable() {
         @Override
         public void run() {
          new ShiftTest().createGUI();
    private boolean shiftPressed = false;
    public ShiftTest() {
     Toolkit.getDefaultToolkit().addAWTEventListener(this,
          AWTEvent.KEY_EVENT_MASK);
    @Override
    public void eventDispatched(AWTEvent event) {
     if (event.getID() == KeyEvent.KEY_PRESSED) {
         if (KeyEvent.VK_SHIFT == ((KeyEvent) event).getKeyCode()) {
          shiftPressed = true;
     } else if (event.getID() == KeyEvent.KEY_RELEASED) {
         if (KeyEvent.VK_SHIFT == ((KeyEvent) event).getKeyCode()) {
          shiftPressed = false;
    public boolean isShiftPressed() {
     return shiftPressed;
    private void createGUI() {
     JFrame frame = new JFrame();
     frame.setDefaultCloseOperation(JFrame.EXIT_ON_CLOSE);
     final JLabel label = new JLabel("Message area", JLabel.CENTER);
     frame.add(label, BorderLayout.PAGE_END);
     frame.add(new JButton(new AbstractAction("Test shift pressed") {
         private static final long serialVersionUID = 1L;
         @Override
         public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent e) {
          label.setText("Shift " + isShiftPressed());
     }), BorderLayout.CENTER);
     frame.pack();
     frame.setLocationRelativeTo(null);
     frame.setVisible(true);
}Piet

HT201274 I went to General Reset Erase All Content & Settings - and now nothing works. I tried the advice on this forum, i.e., turn the phone off, connect to the white apple cable while pressing the home key. Still not working. What do I do?

After i dod the above my ipone still does not work. It seems like all settings are gone. I tried the advice on one of the forums here which was turn the phone off, connect to the cable to the computer and not the phone, press the home button continously and connect the cable. Itunes at this point identified the phone and prompted to restore settings. It seemed to be doing something but now once I tried turning it on, its still not working.

start iTunes,
plug in your USB cable
switch off your iPhone
press holding home button(the round button in front of the Phone)
plug it on to the USB cable
keep holding the button
till iTunes says it found a iPhone in recovery mode
then click restore as a NEW iPhone
then sync!?
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1414

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Don't know, but Try this - Reset the iPad by holding down on the Sleep and Home buttons at the same time for about 10-15 seconds until the Apple Logo appears - ignore the red slider - let go of the buttons. (This is equivalent to rebooting your computer.) No data/files will be erased. http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1430
 Cheers, Tom

How to turn on the shift key

before when I pressed the shift key there would be an upshift icon on the screen. now it has disappeared. so now I have to always hold the shift key to use upper case
please help

Never saw what you are referring to. You always have to use the shift key individually when typing a capital unless of course you press the caps lock key (lights up).

Firefox won't let me use the shift key

Hi
Basically when I try and use the shift key I keep getting this bar come up on the bottom of my screen and begins typing my text in there. Even when I close the bar and press the shift key again it still appears; I'm not sure how I can stop it from happening or how to disable it. It's getting frustrating not being able to type properly- I have to use the caps lock key for capitals.
Can someone please help me out?
Thanks

hello Sab01, your screenshot shows the firefox developer toolbar which can be brought up with the keyboard shortcut shift+f2. so this is just a guess, but maybe your keyboard's f2 key is hanging...
in case you cannot solve it that way, please enter '''about:config''' into the firefox location bar (confirm the info message in case it shows up) & search for the preference named '''devtools.toolbar.enabled''' - double-click the entry and toggle its value to '''false'''. this will generally disable the developer toolbar after you restart the browser.

The shift key

Every time I press the shift key multiple times in succession on my Powerbook, I'm given a beep which increases in pitch and every time after that, a short stationary beep. Later, it ends with a decrease in pitch and the noise stops. This is so annoying I keep the mute on constantly. This has been puzzling me for months.

T Moore,
Regarding 9.x...see if you have the Easy Access control panel enabled; certain settings will give audio feedback for users who have physical limitations.

Itunes does not open,everytime i try it says "The itunes application could not be opened. The required folder cannot be found" I have tried the shift key option but that does not work. help!!

I cannot open itunes. Everytime i try it says "The itunes application could not be opened.The folder cannot be found." I have tried the shift key option but this does not work. Please help.!!

Try the actions here for that driver.
iOS: Device not recognized in iTunes for Windows
I would first do this:
Removing and reinstalling iTunes, QuickTime, and other software components for Windows Vista or Windows 7

Opening an application while pressing the shift key

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