It’s midnight, you have an important task at hand but the mouse just refuses to work. Either the mouse battery has drained off or the computer is failing to recognize the mouse as the driver got corrupted or some other problem.
Now if you got to find a workaround and there’s no spare mouse in the cupboard, consider using MouseEmu – it emulates mouse movements as well as clicks via the keyboard.
MouseEmu, short for Mouse Emulator, is a free Windows utility (~10kb only) that lets you control the mouse pointer using the keyboard. Simply run the program, and it will show a list of keys that you may press to move the mouse cursor in whatever direction you like.
It maps the Numpad Keys to mouse movements. So 8 is mouse-up, 4 mouse-left, 6 mouse-right and 5 mouse down. Numpad Keys 1,2 and 3 double up as Left-Click, Right-Click and Scroll-Click. Numpad 7 and 9 are used to scroll up and down. Also see:
- Onscreen Keyboard for Emergency Situations
- How to Clean a Mouse for Smooth Movements
- Click Links on Web Pages without Mouse
Find this article at: http://www.labnol.org/software/control-mouse-pointer-with-keyboard-shortcuts/5021/
web: http://www.labnol.org/ email: amit@labnol.org
Reader Comments
Why use other softwares when Windows has native support for it. Just press Alt+Shift+NumLock, and you can do what this software claims to be doing.
Written by Ambuj Saxena on 10.20.08
Did you know that this functionality is built into Windows? :) Press your number lock key 5-6 times. You should be greeted with a pop-up about MouseKeys. It’s basically the exact same thing as MouseEmu except that the number 5 is the left click and it doesnt have the scroll click buttons, but rather diagonal cursor movements.
Written by Plasma2002 on 10.20.08
I’ll agree with Ambuj ! Nice tip and its easy by the way :)
Written by Rohan on 10.20.08
Looks like I was beaten to the MouseKeys reference :) I totally agree, why would you want to install yet another application to do something that comes with Windows? (and works pretty decently at that!)
Navigate to Control Panel > Accessibility Options > Mouse to enable MouseKeys; you can set quite a few options.
For years, I used to wonder how to right click with MouseKeys, but now I finally know! Press - (minus) or * (asterisk) on the numpad and 5 acts as right click. Press / (slash) to make 5 left click again.
Also, + (plus) acts as double click.
Written by no.good.at.coding on 10.20.08
Yes its nice, we can browse web mouselessly with Firefox Add-on Mouseless browsing navigating by pressing the numbers in blocks in web pages.
Written by venkat on 10.20.08
hi there,
the blog post and the comments only talk about a desktop. Can someone suggest similar solution for a laptop if the cursor pad stops working…
thanks in advance!!
Written by sanjiv Singh on 10.21.08
Hi,
Thanks to you as well as Ambuj for such useful tips. Infact I faced a similar problem very recently when I was in the mid of an important project.
Written by Kanupriya on 10.21.08
To enable the default windows/keyword mouse (windows XP):
Control Panel -> Accessibility Options -> Mouse (Tab) -> Enable the check box “Use MouseKeys” -> Settings -> Choose your preferred settings, I recommend selecting “off” options at the bottom -> ok -> ok
Now you can enable it very easily.
If num-lock is on, you the num-pad as num-pad
If num-lock is off, use it as mouse.
Written by Independent Software Testing on 10.21.08