Bold shortcut not working in apple mail and text edit

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Bold shortcut not working in apple mail and text edit

Hi there, I have tried to find a solution to this but every thread I’ve read stops with Safe Mode. That did not help me. I bought a new mac with Apple M3 and Sequoia 15.1.1 pre-installed. I cannot use the bold shortcut in either mail or textedit BUT it does work in pages and notes. I have checked the keyboard shortcuts and booted up in safe mode - the problem persists there, too. Funnily, when I use a Guest User account the problem disappears and the shortcut works across all apps. Please help, what is happening?

MacBook Air 13″, macOS 15.1

Posted on Jan 19, 2025 3:08 AM

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Answer 1

Jan 19, 2025 4:36 AM in response to writer10

I am using macOS Sequoia v15.2 and the ⌘B keyboard shortcut to toggle bold (selected) text works just fine in Apple Mail and TextEdit. The latter requires one to have formatting set to Rich Text, not Plain text.

The first paragraph was true when I took delivery of this M4 Mac Mini Pro in Fall 2024 with an older version of Sequoia on it.

As to why you do not have a standard keyboard shortcut in the two mentioned applications, I have no idea, unless you or an installed application have remapped some keys at some point. This shortcut works reliably even when the keyboard input source is changed to several other choices.

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Answer 2

writer10 Author

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Jan 19, 2025 4:44 AM in response to writer10

Thanks for the reply! Just to be clear: I checked the keyboard shortcuts and reassigned the commandB just to make sure (as commandI and commandU still work). They had also been working fine for me when changing from one mac to another over the past 15 years, it’s just now that commanB does not work in mail and text edit anymore. Yes, the format for text edit is set to rich text. And again: when accessing the mac with a guest user account all shortcuts work flawlessly as always. Help!

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