Switching Keyboards across all apps?

Keyman Keyman How To
1

I just upgraded to v14 (v8 had worked on an old machine)

Why is this option
Select keyboard layout for all applications
selected and greyed out so I can’t change it.

It’s a real pain having to manually switch from Yiddish to English and back

2

Not only does it insist on using the keyboard across all apps, but it seems to have given up entirely on recognizing the language at the cursor (in Word, e.g.). That worked fairly well in v8.

3

Yes, the reason this option is greyed out is that it is now a feature in Windows versions 8 and later. It’s still available for Windows 7 users.

In Windows 10, you can find this setting buried quite deep in:

Settings > Language Preferences > Spelling, Typing & keyboard settings > More keyboard settings > Advanced keyboard settings > Switching input methods > Let me set a different input method for each app window! (You can short circuit by searching for “Advanced keyboard settings” or “different” in the Settings app.)

That should help with both issues, I think.

4

Thanks very much. I’ll try it this afternoon.

5

Well, almost, but it’s getting hard to know who’s doing what.

Switching between apps now does not insist on staying with the Y keyboard (though it used to work better: now going between different Word files, one E and one Y, it does NOT switch, I guess because it’s still the Word “app”).

But as for recognizing what language the text is, I daresay Word is doing that, badly or not at all. It used to work (Keyman v8) and Windows 7 (with Office home & student 2016) much better.

It’s usable, though it’s a shame to toss out features (whoever is doing it).

Thanks for the help. Any further hints eagerly hoped for.
BG

6

My only thought is that there is an option in Word which may be switched off by default now: Options → Advanced → Editing options → Automatically switch keyboard to match language of surrounding text.

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7

D’oh! Of course, and a thousand thanks. Now my fingers can take things for granted (on a new machine).

I’d forgotten all about that, though the issue was certainly one for Word. It would be nice if there were a way for such things as Word preferences to migrate.

Thanks again.
BG

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