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Participant
January 13, 2010
Answered

CTRL + Z stops working all of a sudden???????????

  • January 13, 2010
  • 10 replies
  • 95015 views

like it says in the title, after a while (usually 5-20 minutes of working in PS CS4 registered version) CTRL + Z keyboard shortcut stops working  (instead of doing the usual UNDO it changes image to CMYK mode) as well as ALL OTHER KEYBOARD SHORTCUTS (for example bracket keys [ and ] dont increase/decrease brush size, they just dont do anything).


All of this happens randomly, but never since the beggining of work, always somewhere after 5-20 minutes, probably after a certain operation in Photoshop, applying some filter effects or similar.


Does anyone else have this problem?


Any help is appreciated!

    Correct answer nikola43

    hiya, i ve just recenty rememered this old thread and i thought to stop by and resolve my own issue:

    The problem was in the language options, to be more exact, in keyboard shortcut to switch between input languages in XP {ALT + SHIFT} which i was accidentally pressing thus changing from ENGLISH to CYRILLIC which caused Y and Z to change places, so when i pressed CTRL + Z it didnt redo, it changed between CMYK and RGB which is CTRL + Y shortcut's purpose, glad i finally solved this, it was bugging me for years.

    risottodirk wrote this solution above, and i cant belive it i havent read it, or maybe i did but didnt get the point back then.

    10 replies

    Participant
    December 12, 2022

    Happened to me as well. Didnt even bother to try to understand why adobe painter decided to be in a different key system than windows, changed the shortcut to Ctrl + W and actually trying to forget 15 years of basic CGI reflexes not to lose half an hour fuguring out why my good ol CTRL+Z became hostile ...

    Participant
    September 16, 2021

    it also happens to me, among many other bugs

     

    Adobe went downhill since Cloudification

     

    Many things that could have been perfected, got stuck in time, at the expense of useless cloud features

     

    good for adobe, yes, stock price goes up, as it's a cloud stock, but not for the user. Time wasting, distracting, now we have a salesman embedded in a tool that is supposed to be for focused work only

     

    so many features have not evolved since early versions, and many things that should have been polished remain this way

    Participant
    September 16, 2021

    now they gave me a badge for posting on the community

     

    clown world

    Participant
    January 13, 2011

    lz,thank you very much!!!!!!!!!!!!!

    Participant
    January 13, 2011

    I've had the same problem for the longest time, it was driving me nuts! You guys are correct, I was pressing alt+shift which switched the languages and messed up my shortcuts. I disabled alt+shift in the windows control panel to solve this issue.

    Thank you all so much for finding the solution. Makes a world of difference to me. I appreciate it!

    Participant
    December 1, 2010

    Unfortunately I'm also looking for an answer for this. As soon as i started Adobe Design Premium CS5 for the first time, my Ctrl-Z won't work anymore. Probably I lost some other hot keys, but undo is what I use most. And nobody so far could give me a solution. Well... good luck for all of us.

    SusanSherman
    Inspiring
    December 1, 2010

    Susan Sherman

    <<embarassing details removed>>

    nikola43AuthorCorrect answer
    Participant
    June 5, 2010

    hiya, i ve just recenty rememered this old thread and i thought to stop by and resolve my own issue:

    The problem was in the language options, to be more exact, in keyboard shortcut to switch between input languages in XP {ALT + SHIFT} which i was accidentally pressing thus changing from ENGLISH to CYRILLIC which caused Y and Z to change places, so when i pressed CTRL + Z it didnt redo, it changed between CMYK and RGB which is CTRL + Y shortcut's purpose, glad i finally solved this, it was bugging me for years.

    risottodirk wrote this solution above, and i cant belive it i havent read it, or maybe i did but didnt get the point back then.

    the_wine_snob
    Inspiring
    June 5, 2010

    Nikola,

    Thank you for stopping back by. It will very likely help others in the future.

    Glad that you got it handled, and your comments are appreciated,

    Hunt

    Participant
    January 14, 2010

    do you have foreign languages in use? It happended to me a couple of times. I'm using a german keyboard and german version of WIN and PS. There is a(windows) shortcut to change the language of the keybord. the "z" on the german keyboard is placed where the "y" is on the english keyboard and vice versa. I don't remember the windows shortcut for the change, I think it was "ctrl shift"

    steveng15089533
    Participant
    October 17, 2018

    Thank you so much risottodirk! that's exactly what the problem was for me, I almost feel silly for not figuring this out myself when the answer (as so often) was so obvious and simple.

    January 13, 2010

    You might like to try Alt-Ctrl-z - it (is supposd to) steps back through your History essentially giving you multiple undo's

    Miker

    Inspiring
    January 13, 2010

    Thanks Miker, Have just tried that (I should have known that shortcut) but it did not work. It is not just the shortcuts not working, the adjustments do not revert back when you have finished using them thy stick at the last usage than after a time the shortcuts start working again. It's weird!

    Fooee

    January 13, 2010

    I've been luck that way.

    The only time I had a keyboard problem was a year or so ago when I switched to a wireless keyboard and mouse. I had so many problems I switched back.

    Sorry It wasn't more help.

    Miker

    Inspiring
    January 13, 2010

    I am glad to see that I am not the only one that has the same trouble. The exact same thing happens to me and it can be very frustrating and you stated it never happens when you first start useing photoshop same here. Most times I have to reopen photoshop to right it but it then reverts back. I never had this trouble with CS3. I just like to add that I also have Elements 7 and the same thing happens so it must have something to do with adobe as I have no trouble with other photo software.

    By the way how do you purge the memory?

    the_wine_snob
    Inspiring
    January 13, 2010

    I do not recall ever having read of this problem, and have never experienced it myself.

    Hot-keys can be touchy subjects, as many different programs map them differently. However, that said, Ctrl-Z has been a very common hot-key with Windows and Windows programs for some time now. I would find it highly unlikely that any Windows program nowadays would map it to anything else. Still, some programs are rather rogue, so it would not be impossible to imagine that something is re-mapping the key-combo, and maybe sometimes after you have started PS.

    What I would also look into would be your memory/resources, and maybe their being filled up. PS offers the ability to Purge Memory. I'd try that, and see if things get back to normal. Obviously, you will lose that last Redo, in the process, but you should then be able to check things out, with the next Redo.

    Good luck, and hope that someone has a real cure for this - just because I know nothing of this behavior doesn't mean that there isn't some Bug, lurking just below the surface, and I missed it.

    Hunt