How to get the use of your number pad back in Ubuntu

June 27th, 2008 by rvdavid Leave a reply »

Number pad not working in Ubuntu? I feel your pain. After an upgrade to Hardy, my numberpad stopped working in Ubuntu Linux. I decided to look around in the Keyboard preferences and found my answer. I found that mousekeys was enabled. To get the use of my num pad back, all I had to do was disable mousekeys.

So, here’s the quick step by step to enable the number pad:

Step 1: Click on System Menu
Step 2: Mouse over on Preferences
Step 3: Click on Keyboard

This brings up the Keyboard preferences window.

Step 4: Click on the Mouse Keys tab
Step 5: Disable the “Allow to control the pointer using the keyboard” checkbox.
Step 6: Click close and ensure that your Num lock is on. :)

At this stage you should have full use of your number pad.

Update: There is a shortcut key to toggle Mousekeys also. You can do this by pressing the SHIFT and Num Lock keys together.

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Posted in Ubuntu

Tags: keypad Linux numberpad Ubuntu

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68 comments

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  1. loconet says:
    August 15, 2008 at 8:10 am

    Thank you! Now in my case it worked fine for weeks after the Hardy upgrade but all of the sudden a couple of days ago (probably because of an update), *poof* numpad functionality was gone. Disabling this setting worked.

    Reply
  2. Jacob says:
    September 10, 2008 at 12:43 am

    Thank you for this. I don’t know how this become enabled, but this did the trick.

    Reply
  3. Zep says:
    November 1, 2008 at 4:11 am

    Thank you!!!

    Reply
  4. Tyler Style says:
    December 13, 2008 at 1:29 am

    Thanks! This issue was driving me MAD in Ibex!

    Reply
  5. chris says:
    December 13, 2008 at 7:53 am

    Thank you!
    My numpad was acting all screwy; the keys were mixed up.
    I nearly replaced the keyboard! Instead a five minute websearch brought me here. Man I love community.

    Reply
  6. Bas says:
    January 3, 2009 at 2:18 am

    Thanks!!!

    Reply
  7. macca says:
    February 12, 2009 at 11:21 am

    Thanks very much…worked a treat!

    Reply
  8. A_Mozes says:
    April 18, 2009 at 3:18 am

    You are Wizard!
    Thank you!!!

    Reply
  9. Olcay says:
    May 31, 2009 at 2:04 am

    Thank alot.
    I have disable my numpad accidently. ? dont know how i did it :)
    But this information helped me.

    Reply
  10. Todd says:
    June 24, 2009 at 2:31 am

    Thank you! Quickest fix ever!

    Reply
  11. rvdavid says:
    July 12, 2009 at 4:23 am

    You’re all very welcome.

    There’s a key combination of “SHIFT” + “Num Lock” that activates the numpad also. So look out for that too.

    Reply
  12. Gustav says:
    August 2, 2009 at 5:28 pm

    Thanks alot!
    as rvdavid says “Shift” + “Num Lock” does the trick aswell (both ways, I guess thats how I got the problem in the first place).

    Reply
  13. Frank Groeneveld says:
    September 23, 2009 at 1:30 am

    Thanks! My numpad “broke” also and this post fixed it :)

    Reply
  14. Shady Hatem says:
    September 28, 2009 at 8:56 pm

    Thank you.
    It works for me :-)

    Reply
  15. mlebel says:
    October 3, 2009 at 1:04 pm

    I was going to format my Debian Install and start from scratch, and that’s alot of work for my setup…
    but then i found this…

    Thanks a lot!!

    Reply
  16. rvdavid says:
    October 3, 2009 at 1:09 pm

    @mlebel – haha! I can totally relate to what you’re saying – re-installing from scratch because of a few niggling little quirks. I’m glad this blog post has saved you a lot of work – you’re welcome!

    Reply
  17. Igor says:
    November 5, 2009 at 8:47 am

    Thanks!

    Now, I only want to find that Idiot who made this “feature” a default and a group of Idiots who approved this. This is a “little thing” from the technical perspective, but is a Major flaw for most non-techies. What would piss off more people — losing the use of their numpad or not having some obscure mouse control feature on (by default)? I bet Microsoft would had never done something like this to their OS!

    But to you, rvdavid, thank you!

    - Igor

    Reply
  18. rvdavid says:
    November 5, 2009 at 9:21 am

    You’re welcome Igor, but I think some of you’re comments a little harsh. :)

    I agree that the shortcut key is obscure though.
    It should have been better documented I guess. But then again I seldom read documentation. lol

    Reply
  19. fabricio says:
    November 29, 2009 at 11:52 am

    thanks man!!! my number pad just stopped working all of a sudden a few days ago. i tried replacing batteries (wireless keyboard) but no joy… now it works again ;-)

    Reply
  20. kpiascik says:
    November 30, 2009 at 3:21 pm

    This was the fastest fix that I have ever found for any problem with Linux. Thanks rvdavid. Although I do agree with Igor that this feature should not be enabled by default. Thanks again.

    Reply
  21. rvdavid says:
    December 16, 2009 at 2:19 pm

    You’re welcome Fabricio and kpiascik :) I’m glad that it’s helped you out.

    Reply
  22. onelove says:
    January 21, 2010 at 3:08 am

    maddening. thanks rvdavid.

    Reply
  23. Prashant says:
    January 22, 2010 at 10:47 pm

    Thank u so much,
    It helps me a lot

    Reply
  24. Mike says:
    February 15, 2010 at 2:15 am

    Thank you very much. I just did a simple update yesterday and this problem appeared.
    I’m using 9.10 ( Karmic Koala) by the way and this worked perfectly.

    Reply
  25. Smiler says:
    February 15, 2010 at 4:49 pm

    This is the BEST Post EVER!

    Shift+NumLock to enable/disable my numberpad. So Cool, You Rock Thank you!

    My Little Kid loves bashing my keyboard and he’s always doing wierd things and I couldn’t figure out what was wrong with my NumberPad, it just wasn’t working, only going up and down etc..

    Shift and Num Lock

    (trying to remember for next time)

    Reply
  26. Mark says:
    February 19, 2010 at 2:54 pm

    Perfect! I thought my keyboard was dying but it worked fine when rebooting to XP! This fixed it for me. I’ll try to remember that hot-key to toggle it.

    Thank-you!

    Reply
  27. rvdavid says:
    February 20, 2010 at 8:59 am

    You’re welcome guys :) glad this post is still helping ppl out a year and a bit later.

    Reply
  28. bart34 says:
    February 20, 2010 at 3:05 pm

    It’s still only 19th February here (see date of your last post rvdavid) on the wet coast of Canada and the post just helped me. I echo all that has been said before. Thanks a lot.

    Reply
  29. Daniel says:
    February 21, 2010 at 4:19 am

    Thanks – works like a charm! Was bummed when this stopped working on my laptop since having a number pad on a laptop is a major plus to me.

    Reply
  30. Fishbowler says:
    March 26, 2010 at 8:54 pm

    Ace! That’s been bugging me for a while! Thankyou!

    Reply
  31. daniel says:
    March 30, 2010 at 10:31 pm

    Awesome!

    Reply
  32. Sebastien says:
    April 21, 2010 at 2:18 am

    Thanks! Just happened to me as well. Glad to find your post! 123456789 (proof that it’s working! ;-)

    Reply
  33. RottNKorpse says:
    May 14, 2010 at 5:42 am

    thank you very much…especially for the shortcut key information, didn’t know about that shortcut although I think I may have accidentally used it to turn on the mousekeys.

    Reply
  34. Kevin Guertin says:
    June 27, 2010 at 4:52 am

    Thank you! This has been bugging me for a few weeks. All of a sudden, my numpad stopped working for numbers. I have a Logitech keyboard that does NOT have a NUM LOCK key and so I dismissed the problem for a while. I thought maybe there was a specific key combination I accidentally hit to switch it from numbers to cursor control. Then, I thought maybe it was a setting somewhere in Ubuntu. I even looked at Ubuntu’s Keyboard Preferences and that setting didn’t dawn on me, for whatever reason, even as obvious as it was! :)

    Reply
  35. Mykola says:
    July 3, 2010 at 5:45 pm

    Thanks

    Reply
  36. jmmp says:
    July 21, 2010 at 3:10 am

    Thanks. What a relief!

    Reply
  37. OnHate. says:
    September 17, 2010 at 2:13 pm

    Thanks!

    Obrigado!

    Reply
  38. auldnic says:
    October 16, 2010 at 2:14 am

    Thank you. New Ubuntu user here and this post was the 2nd hit for “logitech keyboard number pad not working linux” in google. Now to the next challenge…

    Reply
    • rvdavid says:
      October 16, 2010 at 5:08 pm

      You’re welcome. I was once a new ubuntu user as well :) I understand what you mean by “next challenge”. Just curious tho’ what _is_ the next challenge for you? maybe I can help you or at least point you to the right direction

      Reply
  39. Bryce says:
    November 1, 2010 at 10:28 am

    Thank you so much. I would have thought this problem would go away, but the default installation of Maverick had that option enabled. I thought I’d gone mad, but it was a simple fix.

    Thanks

    Reply
  40. Alan says:
    November 23, 2010 at 6:43 pm

    Your posting is one of those gifts that keeps on giving.

    Thanks so much for the info.

    Reply
  41. adam says:
    February 3, 2011 at 1:18 am

    First comment in 2011, but still fixed it for me! Thanks!

    Reply
  42. Fred says:
    February 4, 2011 at 1:18 am

    Perfect!!!! Works on my HP DV6
    But on 10.10 – Maverick Meerkat:

    > System > Preferences > Keyboard
    Mouse Keys TAB, then uncheck “Pointer can be controlled using keypad”

    Reply
  43. Sherrie says:
    March 4, 2011 at 10:25 am

    Thanks so much for the post! Worked like a champ and kept me from taking it in for repair!

    Reply
  44. Ray says:
    March 9, 2011 at 2:30 am

    Worked like a charm on Ubuntu 10.10! Thanks!

    Reply
  45. Jenny says:
    April 26, 2011 at 3:34 am

    Thanks! Didn’t realize how much I relied on the number pad til I didn’t have it.

    Reply
  46. shadow1980 says:
    April 26, 2011 at 9:35 am

    THANKS A LOT!!!!

    Reply
  47. Mp3 says:
    June 24, 2011 at 7:57 pm

    Thank you very much.
    it worked

    Reply
  48. jbc says:
    June 28, 2011 at 9:35 pm

    you saved my life

    lost control of my numpad after a f-ed up update

    Reply
  49. panos says:
    July 17, 2011 at 5:22 pm

    thanks

    Reply
  50. Drey says:
    August 16, 2011 at 2:04 am

    And I discovered another weird behaviour in Ubuntu 11.04 about Shift+numpad:
    1) numlock on:
    num4=4
    shift+num4=left arrow
    2) numlock off:
    num4=left arrow
    shift+num4=left arrow

    So now I can’t select text using keyboard numpad+shift. (Usual arrows+shift are unusable because of broken left key button). Any help would be very appreciated.

    Reply
  51. Drey says:
    August 16, 2011 at 2:14 am

    Okay, gotcha!
    “Go to System | Preferences | Keyboard, click the Layouts tab, click Options…, expand ‘Miscellaneous compatibility options’, and check both “Shift does not cancel NumLock, chooses 3rd level instead” and “Shift with numeric keypad keys works as in MS Windows”"

    Reply
  52. John says:
    September 26, 2011 at 2:35 pm

    Fantastic. This was driving me nuts.

    Reply
  53. Maahi says:
    September 26, 2011 at 6:53 pm

    Thanks for detail explanation. It works properly.

    Reply
  54. Mrunal says:
    November 2, 2011 at 3:51 pm

    Thinks .. its very helpfull to me..

    Reply
  55. required says:
    November 20, 2011 at 3:47 am

    Thanks! I didn’t hold one of the keys down long enough to realize it was controlling the cursor, or I might have figured this out myself. I don’t know how that got enabled.

    Reply
  56. Stephen says:
    November 25, 2011 at 5:50 am

    Outstanding – this has been bugging me for days. Thanks.

    Reply
  57. sena says:
    December 2, 2011 at 2:11 am

    great. Thanks for the info.

    Reply
  58. u_da_man says:
    December 19, 2011 at 12:09 pm

    thanks alot i love my ctl-alt- shortcuts. u da man

    Reply
  59. Yes says:
    January 25, 2012 at 7:16 am

    Thank you!

    Reply

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