Spacebar not working on Word/OneNote (iPad)

Anonymous
2020-05-05T23:52:09+00:00

Hello. I am using an iPad Pro with an external Magic Keyboard, and I came to notice (quite quickly) that on the Microsoft Office suite the spacebar is not working when pressed/clicked on the keyboard. So, I come to ask, is there a way to solve this? Because currently it is kind of useless to use Word/OneNote and not be able to press the spacebar and have a space between words.

I think its possible that the problem is present since the Magic Keyboard is brand new hardware and Microsoft Office Suite may not recognize it yet. And it is a big deal and problem for note taking or word processing in general.

EDIT: Spacebar works properly only when pressing Option + Spacebar, quite annoying to have to do a command just to correctly use the spacebar, seems like a bug to me.

The problem is present on an iPad Pro 2020 11” with the Apple Magic Keybard (Spanish - ISO) running iPad OS 13.4.1and the latest OneNote/Word version.

Microsoft 365 and Office | Word | For home | iOS

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  1. Anonymous
    2022-03-03T12:46:10+00:00

    I’ve ran into the same issue. Hitting spacebar inside OneNote would get me into a search window. Spacebar worked fine everywhere else. Control+Spacebar worked well in OneNote. I was using a K380 Bluetooth keyboard.

    I was able to fix it this way: under ipad settings> keyboard> shortcuts, I found that spacebar was associated with activate. Not sure what activate was, I just remapped it to something different.

    Now spacebar works as expected. Odd eh?

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  2. Anonymous
    2022-03-03T12:48:07+00:00

    Ouch, that’s got to be annoying to actually type out sentences! I’m glad there’s other options out here.

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  3. Anonymous
    2022-04-04T17:09:36+00:00

    That did it!!! Thank you!

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  4. Anonymous
    2022-04-10T15:06:36+00:00

    You can still keep full access on just change the commands and what you want them to be. For example the space was the “enter” action as default i changed the return button to be the “enter” action you can do this with all the commands.

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  5. Anonymous
    2022-04-11T08:44:55+00:00

    Hi,

    In spite all the WORKAROUND solutions people have provided, this is 100% a Microsoft One Note issue. I am able to use my keyboard without any problems in any other note taking apps, without having to change my command mapping or even worse deactivate full keyboard access, which is important for Universal Control. FYI is not only a spacebar issue, the arrow keys do not work either. When I click arrow keys it moves the focus of the keyboard to another section of the app, render it sill imposible to type.

    This issue was open 2 years ago, and I wonder what good is to us to have new features in One Note if we can not even write a single note. Please give some priority to fixing this.

    Problem happening on an iPad pro 2021 12.9" iOS 15.4.1 using Universal control and pairing my keyboard directly to the iPad.

    Thanks!

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