Maybe your mouse or touchpad at your laptop is inoperable, or maybe you forget to bring it with you. Perhaps you are having USB driver problems, and your mouse isn’t working. I know that it is a very painful experience navigating through everything using only your keyboard. Web browsing will be nearly impossible unless you’re prepared to hit the Tab key thousands of times! So it’s better you know how handle this situation before it happens. I am going to show yo00u how can you move your mouse cursor using your numeric keypad.
Control Mouse cursor using keyboard

Here are two tools which you can use to move your cursor using keyboard. For those using laptop, just hold down the Fn key, and you can use the numeric keypad in the center of your keyboard to move the mouse.

1. MouseKeys – When enabled, you’ll see a mousekey icon at the tray bar.

Enable MouseKeys

- Windows has a built in tool called MouseKeys that allows you to control the pointer with the numeric keypad on your keyboard. To enable MouseKeys, you can go to Control Panel > Accessibility Options > Mouse tab and check Use MouseKeys. Another way to enable MouseKeys is by simultaneously pressing the “left ALT + left SHIFT + NUM LOCK” keys. Take note that it only works if you press the left side ALT and SHIFT. If you use the right side, it wouldn’t work. When MouseKeys is enabled, you can temporary disable it by pressing the Num Lock key.

Here are the keys used by Mousekeys to navigate your cursor:

  • 2 = Move Down
  • 8 = Move Up
  • 4 = Move Left
  • 6 = Move Right
  • 7 = Move Diagonally Top Left
  • 9 = Move Diagonally Top Right
  • 1 = Move Diagonally Bottom Left
  • 3 = Move Diagonally Bottom Right
  • 5 = Simulate Mouse Single Left Click
  • (+) = Simulate Mouse Double Click
  • (-) = Simulate Mouse Right Click
  • (*) = Simulate Both Mouse Buttons Click At Once

    • By default, the cursor will move really slow. You’ll have to go to Settings and adjust both the top speed and acceleration to the highest. To set the maximum speed at which the mouse pointer moves when you hold down a MouseKeys direction key, under Pointer speed, drag the Top speed slider. To set how quickly the mouse pointer accelerates to its maximum speed when you hold down a MouseKeys direction key, under Pointer speed, drag the Acceleration slider.
    Speed up mousekeys

    2. Mouse Emulator – When enabled, you’ll see a Mouse Emulator icon at the tray bar.

    Enable Mouse Emulator

    - Mouse Emulator is free and very small program (36KB) to control the cursor using keyboard. There is no setting window for you to configure. Just download, extract and run mousemu.exe. Num Lock must be turned on for Mouse Emulator to work even if it’s running in tray.

    Here are the keys used by Mousekeys to navigate your cursor:

  • 5 = Move Down
  • 8 = Move Up
  • 4 = Move Left
  • 6 = Move Right
  • 1 = Simulate Mouse Single Left Click
  • 2 = Simulate Mouse Right Click
  • 3 = Simulate Mouse Middle Click
  • 7 – Mousewheel up (Scroll)
  • 9 – Mousewheel down (Scroll)
  • CTRL + 0 – Enable/Disable Mouse Emulator

    • What I like about Mouse Emulator is the diagonal movement. Simply combine the vertical and horizontal keys to move the cursor diagonally. It is like how you move when playing Counter Strike using WASD except this is using numeric keypad. To adjust the mouse speed, double click on one of the .reg files and restart the program to change the mouse speed. For instance double-click on SlowMouseSpeed.reg and restart the program if you think the mouse speed of mouse emulator is too high.

    [ Download Mouse Emulator ]

    Technorati Tags: , , , ,