'Option' key not working on my MacBook

Hi all,
To be more specific my left sided 'option' key on my mid 2010 15" MacBook Pro is not responding. The right one works fine. I have Mavericks installed. Us there anyway if trying to fix this as I can't quite afford to go the Genius Bar this month!
Any help or advice is appreciated!

Just started noticing a problem with my left hand option key this morning on my early 2012 MacBook Air. Could not get it to perform a proper percentage sign in an email. Other symbols seemed to work fine though. If anyone has insight that'd be a help. I'm suspecting perhaps software?

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Hi!
i have a problem with the option-key for some shortcuts and specifically in photoshop.
does someone had this problem before or has any idea for a solution?
Thanks!

Yam, I'm using 10.6.8, not 10.9, but I wonder if you might have the same problem I had. It turns out I had inadvertently pressed a keyboard combination that invoked Unicode/Hex Input from the Language & Text preferences, and this prevented the option key from working.
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Open System Preferences > Language & Text.
Click the Input Sources tab.
At the very bottom, on the right, check the box beside "Show Input menu in menu bar" (there may be an easier way but I don't know of it).
Now, in your Mac menu bar, find the Text Input menu which may look like your national flag, but may not (especially if this is your problem).
On my system, the icon is just to the right of the speaker volume and just to the left of the battery level icon.
You should see your flag and/or language (U.S. in my case.)
Instead, what I saw was this:
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If this was your problem, you'll want to disable the keyboard shortcut so that this doesn't happen again:
Open System Preferences > Keyboard.
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I hope this helps you or someone else. I spent a long time looking before I stumbled upon the answer.

Option Key Not Working Correctly

Hi All,
I'm having a very strange issue with my Option Key all of a sudden. It has stopped functioning as an Option Key and will ONLY increase the volume setting. When I bring up the keyboard viewer the Option Key won't register, it just turns up the volume. I've repaired permissions from my install disk and restarted a few times, but it didn't help. It's a VERY annoying problem, and I'd really appreciate any help at all. Thanks.

Thanks for the response, eww.
I was beginning to think it was a hardware issue, too. BUT, I turned my laptop off last night (instead of putting it to sleep like usual) and now this morning the Option key is working fine again. Seems very odd to me, since I restarted my computer a few times last night and the problem was still there. Perhaps it's heat related?
I'm just wondering now if it's a sign of more troubles to come or just a bizarre random occurrence.
Thanks a again.

Left side shift/command/option keys not working

I have a 2010 11" macbook air and out of nowhere my left side Shift Command Option keys are not working at all. Anyone had this issue? or know what I can do to solve it?
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I had a key fail on my MBA and the problem progressed to other keys. It turned out to be the electoonics in the keyboard, not the individual keys. When it progressed to W, I had to replace it;) Given you have two keys failing at once it could be a similar problem.

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Ok recently rebuilt 2 older "Intel Core Duo" Mac Mini's with SSD drives. They work great and have been flying, however on one of them I wanted to setup BootCamp so that I could run Win7 Pro on it as well.
So here is what I did...
- When I first built the Mini's I used a bootable Firewire drive with Snow Leopard installed
- I had the drive divided into 2 partitions at first
- when I tried to install BootCamp error message kept telling me it needed only one part, so I finally made Primary OSX part one big part, then I was able to get BootCamp going
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- Next I opened up Mini to get to CD, I had a friend that was able to get one out by opening up the actual dvd drive but I was trying to avoid that. So what I ended up doing was using a putty knife to keep CD from spinning on bootup. After about 10 to 15 seconds of the CD not spinning, it finally kicked it out for me. (YAY!!)
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Nothing Works, I am either stuck at the "No Bootable Device" screen, or if I turn on Firewire drive with Snow Leopard I get a blinking cursor that never shows any text.
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The Formatted test drive did not have Any OS on it. I just thought that since that was how I installed it originally, that it would work.
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So what your saying is, do the same thing but hang SSD from broken Mini onto working Mini and boot up with same Firewire drive, and have it install OS back onto Broken SSD drive.
Assuming all of this works correctly, why would plugging it back into broken Mini work? Wont the Broken Mini still be looking for BootCamp to finish what it started? (just seems that way from what I've experienced so far)

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I've tried reset keyboard shortcuts to defaults, a different keyboard, system preferences related to the keyboard, trashing Photoshop preferences, etc.
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have you updated with iMac Software Update 1.0
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see here:
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Here is the kicker! In addition, I purchased a logitech solar bluetooth keyboard and the arrows work fine with my ipad but do not work when paired with the macbook pro. All other keys work fine on the macbook pro using the bluetooth keyboard.
I believe this says that the problem is not in my macbook pro keyboard. So where can it be?
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'Option' key not working on my MacBook

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