Have you ever been in a situation to work in a computer with out a mouse, or with a not working mouse?
what did you do to complete your task with out that small device?
Actually, windows has a feature to handle all the mouse operations in the key board too. By enabling this feature, we can turn the numeric keyboard to act as a mouse.
To turn on the mouse keys in key board in Windows XP,
- Go to Control Panel (Start >> Control Panel) or (Windows Key + R and type “control”)
- Select “Accessibility Options”
- Select the tab “Mouse”
- Enable the Mouse Keys by Selecting the “Use MouseKeys” check box
That’s it, now the mouse keys are enabled in your keyboard, so you can start using them, using your numeric keyboard. If you want to handle the mouse keys with some more setup like short cut keys, please read further.
Mouse key settings
- Click “Settings”, if you want have some more setup on mouse keys.
Click “Settings” button, and in the opened “Settings for MouseKeys” window, Enable the “Use Shortcut” check box, so that you can turn the mouse keys on/off at anytime, by just pressing the “left Alt+left Shift+Num Lock” keys. (When you press these keys, sometimes, a pop up will appear to confirm the setting, you can simply press “Yes” to turn on or select “Settings” to change the settings)
- In the “Pointer speed” section of “Settings for MouseKeys” window, you can setup the mouse pointer speed, by selecting the “Hold down Ctrl to speed up and Shift to slow down” check box, To check this setting in action, just hold the “Ctrl” key or “Shift” key and move the mouse cursor using Numeric keyboard. (moving the mouse pointer using the numeric keyboard is explained below)
- You can decide, when the numeric keyboard should act as a mouse, by selecting any one of the options in “Use MouseKeys when NumLock is” section. If you select the option “Off” in this section, the mouse keys will turn on when the NumLock is in off state. Select the option “Off” here, so that you can have both Numeric keys and as well as the Mouse keys in Numeric Keyboard (All you need to do is just on/off the NumLock).
- Select “Show MouseKey status on screen” option, if you want to see the status of the Mouse keys in system tray area. (you can see a mouse image in the bottom right corner of the screen, and this icon will indicate the status of Mouse keys whether it’s in on state or in off.)
That’s all. Now you enabled the Mouse Keys in your Numeric Keyboard, Just turn off the Num Lock and try the mouse keys in action.
Move the Mouse pointer using Mouse Keys
| Key (in Numeric key board) |
Function (To move the mouse pointer) |
| 1 |
Down and to the left |
| 2 |
Down |
| 3 |
Down and to the right |
| 4 |
Left |
| 6 |
Right |
| 7 |
Up and to the left |
| 8 |
Up |
| 9 |
Up and to the right |
Selecting a mouse button
Before selecting the items in the screen, you must first choose which mouse button you want to be the active one. (the left mouse button, the right one or both) You can see the status of which button is selected in the mouse icon in system tray.
| Key |
Function |
| ‘/’ (The forward slash) |
To select the left mouse button |
| ‘-’ (The minus sign) |
To select the right mouse button |
| ‘*’ (The asterisk) |
To select both buttons |
Note: If you select the left mouse button as the active button, it will remain active until you choose another button. After you select a mouse button, you don’t need to select a mouse button again until you want to change buttons.
Clicking items using Mouse Keys
Once you choose an active button, you can click items on your screen
| Actions (To do these Actions) |
Do this |
| Click an item |
Select the left mouse button as your active button, point to the item and press 5 |
| Right-click an item |
Select the right mouse button as your active button, point to the item and press 5 |
| Double-click an item |
Select the left mouse button as your active button, point to the item, and then press + (plus sign) |
Dragging items using Mouse Keys
You can use the numeric keypad to press and hold the active mouse button and to release it. This is helpful if you want to drag an item.
| To (Action) |
Do this |
| Drag an item |
Point to the item and then press 0 (Zero), use mouse keys to move the selected item over the screen. |
| Drop the item |
Point to the location where you want to move the item, and then press the period or point symbol (.) |
Ohhh, it’s really a long post to explain just a simple feature 
