This is a software issue – here's how to fix it

Are you having problems with your tab key in Windows 7? I know you are! My desktop computer runs Windows 7 64-bit and it worked fine for a few months until a few days ago. Suddenly I couldn't tab to the next form field in an online form. I thought it was strange so I restarted the browser and it worked once, but then randomly stopped after a while.

I thought it was a browser issue but quickly realized I had the same tab problem in Word, Outlook, and Quickbooks. What a royal pain! I didn’t realize how often I was using the tab key until it stopped working! Anyway, after some research and messing around, I figured out what the problem was. In this article I’ll try to list the different possible solutions and hopefully your tab key will be working fine again.

I was able to quickly rule out hardware issues such as the keyboard because I swapped the keyboard and still had the same problem. This problem is normally a software issue and is caused by other programs interfering with keyboard input or other programs.