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I tried to use Alt as meta key for the FSF Emacs 23 Windows version and for EmacsW32 but especially M-x (Alt-x) does not work.

Somehow I cannot use Alt as Meta key for Alt-x (M-x). I searched really hard and all I got is how to switch the meta key to Alt in w32-meta-style. Currently this variable has the value 'use Alt as Meta key'. I also tried all other values with no success. Furthermore I installed the unpatched version of emacs from http://ourcomments.org/Emacs/EmacsW32.html and the original binaries from gnu.org. All versions have the same problem.

Alt works as Meta, except for Alt-x (Meta-x).

My setup is as follows:

  • Windows 7 x64 Professional
  • German keyboard

This question is Windows specific as I have a working Ubuntu version of Emacs 23.

EDIT: It was Growl for Windows. It loads on start up and caputes all Alt-x inputs. So my solution was to just disable Growl as I do not need it anymore. Might be another App for you.

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    I'm goign to guess this is related to the german keyboard - I have the same setup other than that and it works out of the box. Commented Jun 27, 2011 at 16:27
  • Nice find, it was Growl for Windows causing the problem for me too. Commented Apr 24, 2012 at 1:07
  • Thank you. Growl was the problem for me as well. What a weird thing to do. Commented Feb 1, 2014 at 4:25

3 Answers 3

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It should work out of the box. Does Alt+x work as M-x if you start Emacs with the -Q flag? That inhibits loading of your customizations, in case one of them is breaking M-x on Windows.

Also, Emacs only treats the left Alt key as Meta by default, the right Alt (AltGr), is used for entering special characters .

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6 Comments

You are right. The problem was not Emacs at all but Growl for Windows which is in my Autostart. Growl uses Alt-x internally as a hotkey for something. This link [0] shows you how to change the hotkeys. Another option is to just disable growl entirely. [0] - groups.google.com/group/growl-for-windows/browse_thread/thread/…
Wow, what an off reason. Helped me. Thanks. I'll try Snarl instead of Growl. Snarl is even open source!
Growl for Windows looks like it is open source too (code.google.com/p/growl-for-windows), but the last commit was in 2012. Once I figured out how to add the GNTP transport to Snarl, it looks like it will be a great replacement. It solved my M-x problem, hooks into lots of other notification systems such as the built in Win32 notifier, and is an active project. Thanks for the suggestion.
@RyanBeesley, you are welcome. My memory is so bad I had to come back here through google to discover the same thing again. :) Scary.
@Prof.Falken, me too. :-/ I couldn't remember which was the one that caused me problems. :-)
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I don't know about w32-meta-style but did you set w32-alt-is-meta? See http://www.gnu.org/software/libtool/manual/emacs/Windows-Keyboard.html

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I tried to assign w32-alt-is-meta but it still does not work.
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The Growl hotkeys can be changed: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/growl-for-windows/luSpf9lQQRM

To disable the hotkeys, just remove the content of the 'value' tags.

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