Beats audio keyboard shortcut conflicts with MS Office

[shwonline]

I just discovered that Beats audio conflicts with a common keyboard shortcut in Microsoft Office, and I cannot find any way to turn it off or reassign it in the Beats controls.   Specifically, CTRL+SHIFT+leftanglebracket, which reduces type size in MS Word and PowerPoint, is used to turn Beats on and off.   I use this shortcut in PowerPoint all the time, and if Beats does not provide a way to get around it, I will be forced to disable or uninstall the Beats audio.  Does anyone know how I can get around this?

[sumsolstice]

What model of PC and Office are you using?

I just tried this on a TouchSmart 610 PC with Beats, using Office 2010 (albeit Starter).   The control/shift/<  combination reduced font size in Word,  the > flavor increased it.

Beats didn't enable/disable for me with using the keystroke you mentioned - I checked both visually and listened to music while doing it.

Maybe you are on a different platform, Office version, or audio or keyboard/keyboard driver version, or something than I am - not sure...

-DM (while I'm a long-time HP employee, the comments/suggestions here are my own, not my employer's)

[shwonline]

HPE-510t
Windows 7 Home Premium
Office 2010

The Beats Audio control panel in the task bar actually seems to be an IDT control panel when you dig into it (version 1.0.6325.0)

[pehorton]

same problem here.

Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit

MS Office 2010

HPE-510t

Beats 1.0.6349.0

it seems like useless bloatware anyway.

[pehorton]

I talked with tech support. Solutions were either to remap the MS Office hotkey to something else or uninstall Beats. If that's what you decide you want to do, go to Control Pannel / Programs & Features and uninstall IDT Audio. It will prompt you to reboot and when Windows restarts it should automatically install the generic audio driver. Problem solved.

If that doesn't sound like something you're comfortable doing, don't do it.

[shwonline]

Wow, that's no answer at all.  That shortcut in Office 2010 can't be remapped.  So the answer is to uninstall the audio driver.  I wonder if I will still have 5.1 sound after that. 

HP, if you're monitoring this:  You can't hard code a keyboard shortcut like that.  You have to provide an option to map it to something else or disable the shortcut entirely.  This has been a shortcut in MS Office for many versions now.  Color me unhappy...

[pehorton]

your sound card should still work perfectly.

[cbcarter0]

Press fn and B. 

[shwonline]

...that did nothing. ??

[mrjonz]

I have the same problem, and the option to simply delete the driver seems to be really backasswards.I want to be able to use the volume control via keyboard. Isn't that why I paid for the ENVY? Bad show, HP, bad show. I would think you could send out a remapping update to move it away from Office 2010(TM), don't you agree?