Cannot type anything in searchbox

Trouble

Noob Whisperer
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Hello and welcome to the forum.
Any other issues with inputting text from your keyboard in any other App, Browser or native applications?
Maybe give the native System File Checker a shot at fixing things.
Right click the Start Button and choose Run and type
sfc /scannow
hit enter
wait a while and see what it produces.
 
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Hello and welcome to the forum.
Any other issues with inputting text from your keyboard in any other App, Browser or native applications?
Maybe give the native System File Checker a shot at fixing things.
Right click the Start Button and choose Run and type
sfc /scannow
hit enter
Hi Noob,
No other issues from the input text or keyboard, except for the touchPad scrolling doesn't work in W10, which I think is another story.

sfc /scannow run succesfully. No errors
 
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Trouble

Noob Whisperer
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To see if the issue may be unique to your user profile.....
Try creating a new local acoount, make sure that the new local account is a member of the local Administrator's Group (not a "Standard User")
Log on with that account and see if the problem persists.
 
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To see if the issue may be unique to your user profile.....
Try creating a new local acoount, make sure that the new local account is a member of the local Administrator's Group (not a "Standard User")
Log on with that account and see if the problem persists.

It works !!. With a new local account I can type something in the searchBox.
But I cannot understand why that is not possible with my account ...
 

Trouble

Noob Whisperer
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It works !!. With a new local account I can type something in the searchBox.
Good to hear.
But I cannot understand why that is not possible with my account
It can be due to any number of reasons, some people just right it off to data corruption in your user profile, which is certainly possible, maybe even very likely..... It happens, but.....
If you want to take it one step further just in case there is something firing up in your profile that is not in a new profile, you may want to try clean booting the system and logging on as you and see if the click problem is still present.
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/929135
 
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Cheers!!
I got it right back
from this Here https://basics.net/2016/12/20/windows-10-cant-type-in-search-field/comment-page-3/#comment-306494

After I had done some changes in Windows 10 to make it faster and less "chatty" to Microsoft (switch off Telemetry, switch off error reporting etc.) I could not use search any more. Symptoms were:

  • Can't type into Cortana search field
  • Can't type to search in Start Menu
  • Can't type to search in Win 10 App Store
  • Can't type in taskbar search
  • Can't type in Settings search
There are lots people with the same or similar issues as can be seen from a simple Internet search "win 10 taskbar search not working".

Unfortunately, from all the suggestions, nothing worked for me:

  • Re-install Cortana (keyboard search should also work without Cortana, so that did not help)
  • Kill the Cortana/Search process
  • Rebuild the search index
  • Re-install all default apps
  • Restart the "Windows Search" service
  • Run the "Search and Indexing" Troubleshooter
  • Run system file checker (SFC) to search for currupted files
  • Re-install the keyboard driver
After some hours of poking around, I found that I could right-click in the search field and paste the contents of the clipboard! And I saw the correct search results. So the index must have been fine. It looked like a keyboard issue, not a search issue.

But the keyboard worked in any application (e.g. Notepad, Excel etc.) just not in the searches. I started to suspect that it could be a Windows 10 "Modern Apps" issue. As I never use Modern Apps, I first had to load one (I chose "Calculator"), and - Bingo! - I could not enter any numbers via the keyboard. I could only click on the numbers, but could not type them.

I found that the keyboard did not work for any Windows 10 Modern Apps, just for the traditional desktop apps. Finally I found through some Internet searches how to solve this problem:

  1. Open Task Scheduler
  2. Go to Microsoft > Windows > TextServicesFramework
  3. On MsCtfMonitor, do a right-click and enable the task
  4. Restart your machine
That's it. All the search boxes worked again!

Update: If the task MsCtfMonitor is missing from the list of tasks, you can import it with the .XML file below:

MsCtfMonitor.xml
 

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