This post is in reference to this forum thread in Microsoft’s Community that is now closed but lacked a decent solution (from what I could see).

I had the exact same problem and it was driving me to distraction while doing my monthly bookkeeping; at which time the calculator is used 60 or so times.

Requirement: install the latest edition of Microsoft Mouse and Keyboard Center.

The Solution

The solution, in my situation, was as follows:

Step 1) Open Microsoft Mouse and Keyboard Center, then find the settings for the Natural Ergonomic Keyboard 4000 (or whatever you are using).

Step 2)  Scroll down the “basic settings” until you find the Calculator, and click on it at which time, if this solution applies to you, you will notice it is set to “Open a program, webpage, or file: Windows Calculator”.

Step 3)  You need to change this setting to “Calculator (default)”.

Step 4) Press the calculator button on your keyboard and start entering numbers… it should work immediately on the calculator, unlike before. VOILA!

I do hope this works for 99% of users with this problem. I am sure glad to have this solution because I was going batty with this stupid issue!

Cheers,
Ross

NOTE: The original question is posted below for the purposes of helping interested parties find this.

When I launch the calculator with the button on my Microsoft natural ergonomic keyboard 4000 the calculator opens but it doesn’t get to the foreground.

Then when I click the app in the task bar, the app show but I can’t yet start to type numbers, I have to select the “display” field.

In Windows 7 I was able to hit the keyboard shortcut and start to crunch numbers right away.

Is there a fix to this?