Left & right arrow keys don't move the cursor (in teams)

Teams Chat has new annoying problems (like displaying a blank canvas instead of a zoomed-in image pasted in Chat)- but to stay on-topic for defining the conditions that trigger left-right arrow key lockouts- those definitions need to include version details.

This problem has gone on so long that people should also report what Teams version- web or app, at least- is giving problems. Here, my Teams desktop version on Win10 seems to have settled down to less problematic chat composition- but obviously the problem is still big out in the world. Who knows- maybe the problem has been repaired, and many don't have or can't get the update?

Despite the out-of-date MS advice Google finds- versioning (on the Desktop App for Win 10) has moved to the TOP ellipsis ..., then About, then Version. The Win 10 Desktop app I am using now without gripes about left and right arrows says [You have Microsoft Teams Version 1.4.00.32771 (64-bit). It was last updated on 12/17/2021.] The web interface's ... About menu offers no clue since the version is under MS website control.

Back in November (2021, since this might still go on for years, right MS?) I found that when the problem was frequent and stable, there seemed to be some interaction with MS decision to use the ellipsis ... to activate a menu of word-processing capabilities. The clunky work-around to avoid quitting/restarting also worked for others who posted here. The behavior 'felt' like there was some poorly handled keypress state transition when engaging or disengaging or toggling between using formatting/RTF via the ... menu.

Since then- someone had the problem after trying to bracket text using the _ underscore character. That bracketing also engages fancy text functioning to handle MarkDown formatting (which is more often INconvenient than cool, fwiw MS).

Between the text formatting invoked from the ... menu and the formatting invoked for MarkDown- it still seems there is a bad state setup for re-mapped key functions. We can see that Teams does trap and process keys based on context. For example- generating a bulleted list changes the behavior of the ENTER key multiple times. Entering a bulleted line (beginning a line with an asterisk *) in plain vanilla chat mode USED TO instantly alter the behavior of ENTER, to allow a subsequent bulleted line.

Now, the ENTER key behavior on bulleted lines behaves differently in direct chat (sends the single bullet point line ) and when using ... formatting, where each ENTER creates a new bulleted line until ENTER ENTER. And THEN, the next ENTER press would complete and send the composition to the chat thread. MicroSoft seems to have adjusted this since November 2021, and who knows- maybe even fixed the arrow key behavior- so that now, the first ENTER is also the last, as the incomplete bullet list single item gets posted to the chat thread.

So- the left-right arrow problem seems to be a bullseye in a target that keeps changing shape and position.

This indeed seems to be a bug in Teams. However, this is a problematic bug because there doesn’t seem to be a consistent way to reproduce the problem. And without a consistent reproduction any fix will be experimental. Logging is also very limited around this area for privacy reasons.

It would be very helpful if anyone could remember and describe how they got into this state where left and right keys stopped responding.

There are ideas in this thread about GPU acceleration, print screen key, function key, accessibility keys, switching between editing and composing messages etc, but none can consistently reproduce the problem. The search continues.

BINGO, almost.

Tab to move to the tools panel, lrlrlrl shift-tab did not restore L or R arrow keys.

Tab to move to the tools panel, activating the '...' item, then ESCaping, then shift-tab did restore L and R arrow functions.

The MS-Teams Chat textbox looks like it's got an unchecked state problem.

Just repeating the best workaround to date here.

Thanks. Worked for me! :-)
Weird workaround that can be used while we are waiting for MS to fix this bug!

How can this still be an issue after this long? Note that the workaround of tabbing out of the box and back in worked for me, so it's clearly a bug in Teams. Fix it!