Why did my Command + V (to paste) suddenly stop working?

Maybe I should be weary every time I do one of these shady Apple updates on my 3-year old Mac running 10.11.5.

Suddenly, the shortcut to paste, ⌘ Command V, stopped working for me. But all other shortcuts using the ⌘ Command key still work, such as Copy, Cut, Find, Minimize, etc. Paste still works if I do it manually with the mouse by going up to Edit and clicking Paste.

Even when I log into another user, same problem. And when I am in Recovery Mode, same problem. And I don't think I have any recent add-ons, as far as I can tell.

I restarted several times and reset my Keyboard in System Preferences. I even tried a few random code stuff in Monitor that I found on other forums. Nothing has worked.

Solution 1:

I found that under System Preferences, Keyboard, Shortcuts, App Shortcuts, I had 'Paste and Match Style' selected for ⌘ + V. I don't recall doing this but maybe I just forgot. This should have been a valid option but instead of pasting and matching the style, the result was it didn't paste anything.

Solution 2:

I had the same issue in Mac Excel 2011 I am still using.

• Right click on the Paste icon in toolbar, choose Properties...
• Next screen, click Keyboard... on right hand side
• In "Press new shortcut key", add command+v.

That worked, even though Cmd-V was already in list of current keyboard keys for Paste function.