Sunday, July 5, 2009

Double quotes problem in Windows 7

EDIT: Due to big popularity of this post, let me put the solution on top:

If you have a problem with quotes in Windows 7, try to switch the keyboard layout from "United States - International" to "US"
After changing the keyboard layout, you may need to restart your programs or the computer.

ORIGINAL POST:

After installing Windows 7 and Visual Studio 2008, I discovered the following behavior in the code editor:
Pressing the double-quote (") key once would have no effect.
Pressing any key after that would produce both the double quote character and the next character.

The problem was not caused by Visual Studio, but by regional settings - I solved it by switching from "United States - International" to "US" keyboard layout.
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57 comments:

  1. AnonymousSeptember 24, 2009 at 1:17 PM

    Thanks for that :)

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  2. AnonymousOctober 5, 2009 at 9:39 PM

    Thanks!!!

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  3. AnonymousOctober 8, 2009 at 10:27 AM

    "thanks"...:))

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  4. Flo (dubios.ro)October 28, 2009 at 7:49 PM

    great!

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  5. AnonymousNovember 10, 2009 at 10:04 AM

    thanx again!

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  6. AnonymousNovember 10, 2009 at 12:45 PM

    Thanx, it works!

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  7. AnonymousNovember 15, 2009 at 11:32 AM

    Thanks man!

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  8. SaranNovember 26, 2009 at 9:30 PM

    Thanks :)

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  9. Sam StoneNovember 27, 2009 at 1:35 AM

    Dekuji mockrat, Jaro! Thanks mate! ;-)

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  10. AnonymousNovember 29, 2009 at 1:04 PM

    Thank you.

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  11. AnonymousDecember 10, 2009 at 11:47 AM

    thank you!

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  12. AnonymousDecember 15, 2009 at 5:43 PM

    "Thank you!" :)

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  13. AnonymousDecember 21, 2009 at 6:57 PM

    Nice one - worked for me too, but only after a reboot

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  14. milanDecember 30, 2009 at 2:03 PM

    Thx alot!

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  15. AnonymousJanuary 5, 2010 at 3:28 AM

    THANK YOU !!!

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  16. AnonymousJanuary 6, 2010 at 2:25 PM

    It's nice that someone who knows how to fix a problem just broadcast it.Thank you.

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  17. AnonymousJanuary 15, 2010 at 10:11 PM

    Big thanks!

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  18. AnonymousFebruary 5, 2010 at 10:27 PM

    thanks a lot!

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  19. SpidfireFebruary 9, 2010 at 7:36 PM

    Thx maybe we have to report the problem so microsoft can fix it ??

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  20. Jaroslav KlímaFebruary 9, 2010 at 10:06 PM

    There is nothing to fix, this is by design.

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  21. AnonymousMarch 3, 2010 at 3:12 PM

    Thanks a lot.

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  22. AnonymousMarch 8, 2010 at 9:15 AM

    Don't forget to restart Visual Studio after you change the layout!

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  23. UnknownMarch 11, 2010 at 3:46 PM

    This is really helpful! As a coder, this is really a must do if you got problems with quotes. Anyway, you should add in this brief fix that everyone who tries this fix with no results should do a restart and then check it out. Because I'm sure there are many who encountered this problem and had to restart first.

    Just a suggestion :)

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  24. AnonymousMarch 15, 2010 at 6:54 AM

    ';-) Easy

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  25. AnonymousMarch 19, 2010 at 1:06 PM

    diky moc

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  26. AnonymousMarch 28, 2010 at 6:44 PM

    Thx dude "!"

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  27. copy[it]rightApril 11, 2010 at 2:04 AM

    After years of doing two unnessesary inputs (pressing double-quote twice, and correct the second one with backspace) i finally found the solution by my self, using the very same method. God, i was SO happy that i could normally type the double-quote ONCE to make it appear! :-)

    Hopefully this blog article will help many others in-time! Thank you for sharing this with the world ;-)

    Best regards (from the Netherlands),
    copy[it]right

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  28. AnonymousApril 24, 2010 at 5:35 PM

    Thanks a lot. That quotes' behavior was very irritating.

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  29. AnonymousJune 8, 2010 at 7:13 AM

    Thanx!

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  30. AnonymousJuly 28, 2010 at 6:47 PM

    Thank you. :)

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  31. bexSeptember 21, 2010 at 11:13 PM

    this is definitely a bug, not a feature :D

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  32. DriesOctober 4, 2010 at 8:01 AM

    Awesome!

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  33. UnknownJanuary 25, 2011 at 6:31 PM

    Thanks a lot, this stopped me from cracking my head open by banging it against the wall for several hours.

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  34. UnknownFebruary 6, 2011 at 4:05 PM

    1) The same is in WinXP as well as in Win7.
    2) Does for simple quotes '' as well as for double "".
    3) "nothing to fix, this is by design" - very strange "feature".
    4) Exactly as described:
    "United States - International" requires double press,
    on the other hand, the "English - US" keyboard types a character on each keypress.
    5) I had 2 keyboards (en+cs) installed already, so the change took effect immediately:
    Win restart not needed for me. (this probably can vary/depend)
    6) During thet changing, I had 2 layouts for the en keyboard in the same time.
    There appeared additional icon in the "Win main bar": The "EN" icon + a "keyboard" icon,
    to change layouts of the same EN keyboard.
    7) To be able to remove (unselect/diable) the present "EN-international" layout,
    you need to set some other keyboard/layout as a "default", before.

    Good luck to every one!

    Thank you Jaroslave!

    ReplyDelete
  35. UnknownFebruary 14, 2011 at 9:08 AM

    Thanks a lot!
    Anyway, I think this is a "workaround" rather than a "solution".
    Does anybody know why it behaves that way with the US-International layout?

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  36. AnonymousMay 18, 2011 at 3:32 PM

    in us international if you press the double quotes and then a vowel, it produces ö,ä,ü.. if you press quotes and then a non vowel, it just gives you the quotes + the letter you pressed, eg. "p

    so international is basically if you need to produce funny characters. it is too bad this has to be done at the expense of not having proper double quotes. i think if they could work around that, us-international would have been the best standard. but since they haven't you have to stick to simple US.

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  37. AnonymousJune 13, 2011 at 3:53 AM

    Thank you!!

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  38. AnonymousJuly 23, 2011 at 11:32 AM

    Tahnks man :)

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  39. toopSeptember 15, 2011 at 4:10 AM

    To clarify for those who do not yet understand this behavior: US International is a keyboard setting meant for English-language using people who also frequently have to type the accented characters of various Western European languages (as well as «guillemots», etc). This is achieved by through dead keys, which are used to compose secondary characters. The most common dead keys are " ^ ' ` and ~, corresponding to umlaut (diaeresis), circumflex, acute accent, grave accent and tilde. All of the deadkeys can also be used to produce their ordinary values by pressing a space after. For those of us who use this keyboard layout on purpose, this is second nature. If you've selected this keyboard layout and didn't know what deadkeys are, you should choose a standard English layout; but it's not a bug, its the foundational concept of an international keyboard (it's also not specific to Windows).

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  40. AnonymousDecember 1, 2011 at 10:43 AM

    Thank you :)

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  41. AnonymousDecember 17, 2011 at 5:56 PM

    Many thanks!

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  42. AnonymousFebruary 15, 2012 at 5:05 AM

    many thanks. That is what I am looking for :)

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  43. AnonymousMarch 8, 2012 at 10:24 AM

    The fix works for the " key, but now the Euro sign key (AltGr + 5) stopped working. Is there a keyboard layout (preferably English-US) that allows for single action "-key behavior along with a working €-sign on the 5-key?

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  44. Jaroslav KlímaMarch 8, 2012 at 6:24 PM

    Have you tried AltGr+E?

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  45. AnonymousApril 27, 2012 at 11:12 AM

    Thanks, dude ;) Double quotes were really annoying thing :)

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  46. AnonymousAugust 14, 2012 at 5:35 PM

    "Děkuji Jaroslave!" Big mystery solved.

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  47. ThundergodAugust 19, 2012 at 11:31 PM

    I though that it was a notepad++ thing since I experienced it only there. Anyway thanks! ... It was getting annoying (I had to write 1000 lines of code with that bug just because I was lazy enough to look around google ....)

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  48. AnonymousJanuary 3, 2013 at 4:35 PM

    Thank you 'v'

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  49. AnonymousJanuary 9, 2013 at 9:15 AM

    Thanks! very helpful

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  50. AnonymousJanuary 19, 2013 at 10:29 AM

    Thanks!
    Shame on M$ for their "hidden-not-asked-useless-features"

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  51. UnknownFebruary 5, 2013 at 2:28 PM

    Thanks :)

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  52. UnknownFebruary 26, 2013 at 3:35 PM

    Dakujem velmi pekne! Velmi uzitocna informacia! Este raz vdaka!

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  53. Evan R. MurphyMay 1, 2013 at 7:12 PM

    Thank you to commenter toop for explaining how to work around this for those who want to *keep* the United States - International keyboard layout. To create a double quote, press the " key (shift + '), followed by a space.

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  54. AnonymousJune 13, 2013 at 9:54 AM

    Thanks so much mate. This was pestering me quite a bit and glad to find a solution finally. Cheers.

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  55. AnonymousOctober 7, 2013 at 9:26 PM

    Awesome...
    Thanx..It was really helpful

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  56. AnonymousNovember 12, 2013 at 6:08 AM

    Thnks, that really worked, don't forget to restart your programs

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  57. UnknownFebruary 5, 2014 at 5:18 PM

    No restart needed, takes effect immediately.

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