Unable to insert symbols in documents

Hi. I may be missing something but I seem to have a problem inserting symbols, such as a degree sign, in documents on my tablet (I haven’t tried spreadsheets). This may be related to other posts about keyboard problems on Android but seems a little different.

According to the help, there should be a button on the Insert menu (toolbar) with an Omega symbol on it (similar to MS Office and LibraOffice). However, I only see these options:

Undo, Redo, Page, Breaks, Table, Image, Chart, Shape, Comment, Link, TOC, Page #, End/foot note

As an alternative, I tried to use the virtual keyboard (Google’s GBOARD) and I can access all the symbols I want but it doesn’t matter how often I tap on any character, nothing is inserted into my document. Some keys, however, do work: Tab, Enter and Backspace.

On my mobile phone, I have no trouble with the virtual keyboard and I can enter symbols. If anyone can tell me how to get symbols on the physical keyboard I would very grateful but it has eluded my so far!

ONLYOFFICE Mobile: Documents

Device: Lenovo TB336FU tablet with bundled keyboard
OS version: Android 16
App version: 9.4
Mode: On Device

Thanks

Hello @Chris2527

Can you record a video of that? Also, there should be a version of GBoard available somewhere in the list of installed apps, can you check it too?

Before digging into physical keyboard issue, I’d like to check the behavior with virtual one first, because this might be a blocker.

Hi @Constantine

Sorry for the delay - grandchildren and all that.

I’ve created a short video which I hope shows the problem I’m seeing.

In the video I’ve started a very simple text document with “Test###” and I then type “test” on the physical keyboard. At the top, the Insert toolbar doesn’t appear to have a facility to enter symbols so I use the GBOARD toolbar on the left to invoke the virtual keyboard.

However, when I type letters, they appear at the top of the virtual keyboard but not in the document. The same happens after swapping to the symbols view. As an alternative, I tried to invoke the symbols keyboard from the GBOARD menu but the same happens.

You will also see that pressing Enter or Backspace on the virtual keyboard creates new lines or removes text as appropriate.

Regards

Chris

Hello Chris,

Sorry for the delayed reply, and thank you for the video and the detailed description.

We’ve forwarded your case to our QA team for verification and are currently checking this behavior. We’ll post an update here as soon as we have any news.

Hello Chris,
Thank you for waiting.

We are still checking this behavior, and we would like to ask you to try one more thing on your tablet. It seems the issue may be related to the word suggestions / autocorrect bar shown above the Gboard keyboard.

Could you please temporarily disable autocorrection and text suggestions in Gboard, then reopen the document and check if the same issue still occurs?

Also, please let us know your current Gboard version.

Hi @Marix

Thanks for your continued efforts. The version of GBOARD is 17.5.7.917159154-release-arm64-V8a.

I tried turning off the Suggestion Strip, Auto correction and Word Suggestions on both the virtual and physical keyboards but nothing changed (other than having trouble figuring out how to turn them all back on again - oops).

It may be worth saying that the only reason for using the virtual keyboard was to try to find a way to enter symbols such as a degree sign. I had expected to find a facility on the Insert menu, as in other versions of the software. If it’s there and I’ve missed it, please tell me.

Regards

Chris

1 Like

Hello Chris,

Thank you for checking this and for sharing the Gboard version.

We were able to reproduce the issue on our side. It appears to be related to using the on-screen keyboard while an external physical keyboard is connected to the Android device. When the external keyboard is disconnected, text input from the virtual keyboard starts working correctly again. This behavior has now been registered in our bug tracker and is being investigated.

As a temporary workaround, please try disconnecting the physical keyboard from your tablet and then use Gboard again to enter the required symbols.

We’ll keep this thread updated as soon as we have any news on the fix.