I’m writing this post because this keeps getting me! I’ll be working away on my work PC, which is running Windows 7 (but I had the same issue on Vista) and then my ” and @ keys swap position in the application I’m working in (usually Photoshop or Visual Studio). What I mean by this is that when I type shift + 2 I usually get inverted commas (“) typed. Instead, shift+2 will result in the at symbol (@). Similarly, the key which usually produces the at symbol (the ‘ key on my keyboard) produces the ” instead. It seems that the cause of this is that I am inadvertently switching between keyboard layouts using a keyboard shortcut – it’s very easy to do! In my case, I have 3 keyboard setups in play – English UK, English Ireland and English US. I’m not sure if I set this up myself or if it is the default. I also use a *lot* of keyboard shortcuts, preferring them to spending time using the mouse to do things like switch between programs.
So if you have accidentally switched the @ and ” or any other characters around, here’s how you resolve it. The keyboard shortcut (which you probably hit to cause the problem) is Left Alt + Shift. If you hold these keys down together again, you should resolve the issue. If you want to change the hot key (or ensure that it is Left Alt + Shift in your case), in Windows 7 you can go to the Region and Language control panel, click the ‘Keyboards and Languages’ tab, click the ‘Change keyboards’ button (a new panel opens now), then in the new panel, click the ‘Advanced Key Settings’ tab and you should see a list titled ‘hot keys for input languages’ which has a key sequence listed against the first one.
There you go, hope it solves your problem!
