How To Fix Your Keyboard Typing Numbers Instead Of Letters
What is Num Lock?
Have you ever been in a situation where you are typing on your laptop and, all of a sudden, some of the keys start outputting as numbers and symbols instead of as the letters that it should, for me, my keys such as "U, I, O ' changed to "456". What’s going on? The most likely answer to this problem would fall on your Num Lock key.
Num Lock, Which is the short abbreviation for “number lock,” is a feature of PC keyboards that dates back to the very first IBM PC which was released in 1981. When designing the PC, in a bid to save room on the keyboard, IBM decided to make the keys on the numeric keypad to carry out double duty as acting as both number keys and cursor keys. To switch the modes between them, IBM brought out the Num Lock key.
With the Num Lock active, the numeric keypad on a desktop PC would start acting like an adding machine keypad with numbers and symbols that each represent mathematical operations. With the Num Lock turned off, the keypad would be registered as cursor keys and some editing keys.
What’s Different About Num Lock on a Laptop?
Most laptops do not have dedicated numeric keypads, so the Num Lock would work differently on them. Instead of changing your keys into numbers, it would convert a section of the QWERTY letters on the keyboard into a virtual numeric keypad.
How to Turn Off Num Lock on a Laptop
The first step to turning off the Num Lock on your PC is to find out the Num Lock key on your laptop’s keyboard. Its location can slightly vary by laptop manufacturer, but it is usually located in the upper-right corner of your PC keyboard.
Look for a small key that has some variation of “Num Lock,” “NumLk,” or even a small lock symbol with a number 1 inside.
In some cases, the Num Lock key doubles as the F12 key, and it defaults to being just Num Lock.
Some laptops might need you to hold down a Function key (commonly labeled “Fn”) while pressing the Num Lock to turn it on or off.
Your laptop will be different. If you have trouble locating your Num Lock key, try searching for a combination of your manufacturer name + “laptop” + “num lock key location” on Google, and you might be lucky to find websites with instructions that are specific to your laptop. For example, Google “Lenovo laptop num lock key location,” and you will find lots of information about the Num Lock key on various ThinkPad laptops.
Preventing Future Num Lock Accidents
Now that you know have known about the Num Lock key, you can easily turn it off if you ever accidentally found yourself typing the numbers again. So, whenever the situations come up, it would not take away useful time from your daily activities, you would just have to repeat the process to disable it
Good luck, and happy typing!
