F4 repeat function is not working properly in Office 365 Home in one machine

Question

F4 used to repeat all actions since the last mouse click, but now only repeats the last keystroke (eg,) the last letter of a word). However it is still ok for repasting etc.

In another 2016 laptop, it works as it should. I have checked all the Options settings and they are the same. Does anyone know the reason, or a work around for this? Thanks

Answer 1

Hi,

The F4 function key is supposed to repeat the last action made regardless if it was a click action or a keystroke. You can check the list of keyboard shortcuts for Microsoft Office here.

Kind regards.

Answer 2

Thanks Patricia. But how is it that on one machine it works properly, repeating everything I have typed since the last mouse click, ie, a whole paragraph if that is what I want, but on the other machine it only repeats the last keystroke, which makes it almost useless, apart from repeating eg, the pasting of a cell which can be useful.

Answer 3

Disappointing that there is no answer to this yet. There must be some setting that controls it. Hopefully someone can help. It is one of the more useful features of Word.

Answer 4

This may be related to the problem of Undo proceeding letter by letter, which I believe occurs when you have Overtype mode enabled.

Another option that has been mentioned as a factor is "having page numbers in the document." That doesn't make any sense to me, but there was some problem (I don't remember what) that was caused (IIRC) by having "Different first page" or "Different odd and even" enabled for headers/footers.

Answer 5

Thanks Suzanne, appreciated. My Normal.dotm does have Different first page and Different odd and even, but within an individual document, if you take these out, the problem persists. It affects documents created by all of my 10 or so templates, also by Word's built-in templates.  It is also a function of the version of 365 on this computer, and does not affect two other computers which have almost the same Normal.dotm. So maybe it is just a quirk of this system and computer, But I may put it on UserVoice and hope MS can have a look at it one day.