Why won’t Tkinter executable capture key combinations?

I’m building an tkinter app on Python 3.7 and creating an .exe with Pyinstaller 3.5 in Windoows 10. When running the code from the IDE, all intended keyboard commands work as expected. However, in the executable, key combinations do not work while single key presses are fine.

Here is some test code that demonstrates the problem:

import tkinter as tk

root = tk.Tk()

txt = tk.StringVar()
lbl = tk.Label(root, textvariable=txt)

def key_handle(event):
    global txt
    txt.set(event.keysym)

def kc_handle(event):
    tk.messagebox.showinfo('Key Combo', 'Key Combo pressed')

root.bind('<Key>', key_handle)
root.bind('<Alt-b>', kc_handle)

lbl.pack()
root.mainloop()

Pyinstaller is then invoked as pyinstaller -w -F key_test.py.

One thing I do know is that the order of the binds doesn’t seem to make a difference. How do I get key combinations working in the executable?

Answer

IDLE is built using tkinter and it could import all needed modules for own use and your code could work correctly but when you run it without IDLE then you have to import all modules which you use in code. In your example it will be

import tk.messagebox

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BTW: Often similar problem is with mainloop(). IDLE aready runs mainloop() so code may work without own mainloop(). But normally (without IDLE) it needs to use mainloop(). It is good to check code in terminal/console/cmd.exe to see if it gives any errors.