Backspace and arrow keys not working as expected

Most of the time Visual Studio seems to work fine. But occasionally, it gets into a funky editing state. I can still type, but I can't move the cursor with the arrow keys. The arrow keys instead seem to take the focus off the editing window. The backspace doesn't work, but the delete key does. The only solution I have found so far is to close all open documents and reopen them.

Is this a bug, or one of those invisible "features" that just seems a lot like a bug? If not a bug, is there a way to toggle out of this state? Otherwise, is there a fix or patch for this?

Solution 1:

This seems to happen to me when I open a solution and there are files already open. I used to close the files, then close and re-open the solution to fix it, but now I just hit Alt + Enter.

Here is the blog where I found this trick.

Solution 2:

i'm still seeing this issue even after the ALT + ENTER.

However i did notice if i had more than one window open if i clicked into each file then attempted backspace, eventually it worked on one, and then I seemed back in a working state.

Solution 3:

I also found this is to be the case when a modal dialog is present, even if it is not visible. You might check if VS has some alert dialogs in the background. Closing them returns to normal state.

Solution 4:

Any of the above solutions didn't work for me. However after much trial and error I found out that if you restart VS and load or create another project, followed by opening the trouble project again, it works.