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This evening the left mouse button on the track pad on my MacBook Pro stopped working.

  • Rebooted. No change.
  • Zotted PRAM. No change.
  • Reset SMC. No change.
  • Connected USB wired mouse. No change.

I've found various discussions of the trackpad mouse buttons not working, but many of the suggestions suggest using a physical wired mouse. But right now it's ignoring both.

Hardware: Macbook Pro 1,2 (17" 2006) External Mouse apple small roller ball middle button (Mighty mouse?)

Verified that the external mouse worked on another computer.

Verifed that the battery is not swelling. Track mouse clicks. Just doesn't do anything.

What do I need to check next?

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4 Answers 4

Reset to default
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Here is what worked for me.

I am on a MBP Retina 13" Late 2013 and macOS Sierra. The pointer started to have erratic movements and generated automatic clicks. Then this stopped but the left click would not work at all, even with an external mouse (only the right click of the mouse worked).

I tried everything (NVRAM reset,...) but nothing worked.

Then I found a post (here) linking it to an issue with an external monitor - I plugged the HDMi of the external screen I use from time to time, turned the monitor on and voila !, the left click worked again !

The post is 3 years old but he bug seems to be surviving...

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I tries all the above methods and found if I disconnected all other WiFi keyboards & trackpads connected to the computer, the problem went away, at least for this time.

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Turned out there was a bluetooth mouse that it was paired to. Mac OS doesn't define the results when a mouse is paired to more than one device. When I moved the laptop upstairs so I could do searches on my main computer while experimenting on the laptop, it 'lost' the connection and would respond to the trackpad clicker. I immediately turned off bluetooth.

For reasons that escape me Snow Leopard will ignore clicks from all other mice if it has a bluetooth mouse 'connected' Since you can have any number of wired mice that are fully functional, this is just bizarre.

I was unable to turn off bluetooth using just the keyboard. While I did discover keyboard shortcuts to open up system preferences, and navigate to the Bluetooth panel, I was unable to move out of the search text box on preferences. Command F7 had no effect.

So at this point my answer is:

Take the Macbook for a walk. Eventually it loses the connection and you can turn off bluetooth.

Bad answer.

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This is not an answer but BT has nothing to do with it. I haven't had BT enabled since I got my MB in 2011. The click works some of the time and not at others. I keep my box clean and make sure all the edges of the track pad are clear. The mechanical movement is full range but the click comes and goes. All other pad functions are normal.

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