“I’ve fallen and I can’t right-click!”
I clicked the right mouse button. Nothing.
Clicked it again. No pop-up menu. Zip. Zilch. Nada.
Over the weekend, maybe since Thursday night, the right-click functionality in my mice and in the touchpad on my laptop had not been functioning correctly.
I have three wireless mice: two identical Logitech M310s (one at my office desk and one at my home office) and a Logitech M325 (stays in my laptop bag for when I work remotely). I’m pretty religious about turning off the M325 when I ‘m not using it, but I usually skip that step when I leave either my office or my desk at home, like probably 99% of you [If you turn off your mouse keyboard every time you power down your computer, let me know in the comments]. My HP laptop also has a built -in touchpad with buttons both above and below.
Every “right” button I tried did nothing when clicked, in every piece of software — browsers, Word and Excel, the Windows taskbar, the desktop, etc. I tried the universal default solution — turn the computer off and turn it back on again “I’ll show you who’s the boss!” — but the problem continued even after rebooting.
So I turned to Google and tried out a few suggestions for messing with the mouse settings in Windows 10, to no avail. Some posts seemed to suggest it might be a registry issue, but I’m do not have the requisite technical skills to dabble in that area without at least a 50-50 chance of screwing something else up.
So I started composing an email to the helpdesk — yes, I technically work in the IT department, but I am a sales and marketing guy who configures Salesforce — and I wanted to confirm that indeed all five buttons were not working.
The twist here is that I had a series of meetings at the office Thursday where I hauled my office mouse and and laptop around with me. I went straight from the last meeting back to my desk to grab my coat and bag and then head to the car. I inadvertently dropped my office M310 right into the bag instead of leaving it on my desk.
Later, while killing some time at my son’s baseball practice, I pulled out my laptop and a mouse and got to work. It was a few minutes before I realized I was using a larger M310. At first I didn’t know which one I had accidentally grabbed, but that mystery was solved when I got home and saw the other M310 sitting right there on my home desk. It was around this time that my right-click stopped working.
So I went through all the machinations above. Draft email to IT ready to go, I pulled the M325 out of my bag to double check, first time using it since last week, turn on the power switch and “voila” — it works! Right-click is back! Okay, shut off the M325 and try the office M310. Yes, it works, too! Woo-hoo!
So a knotty problem for right-click not working in Windows 10 solved. Just be sure to turn off all your mice and turn them back on one-by-one. When you use multiple wireless mouse and keyboard combos, as I do (even if they are all the same compatible brand), your laptop is bound to get confused eventually. Just a matter of untying the big knot by powering all off and then powering on again, one at time, to get them each to work.