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What did you clean it with? It is possible whatever you used got into the keyboard and fried something. Also how were you removing the keys on your MacBook? That would take a certain amount of disassembly.
 
you could always just use a usb keyboard...or you could just suck it up and take it the apple store and pay an arm and a leg to have them fix it
 
Just for the info: DON'T use any tissue-like things to clean the internals of a computer, static electricity will mess your electronics up! The best to do if you want to 'clean' something inside is something that blows air at acceptable pressure. Also don't touch to much electronics, you might cause corrosion effects..
 
you could always just use a usb keyboard...or you could just suck it up and take it the apple store and pay an arm and a leg to have them fix it

Agree with this.

I wish I could merge all the "I took apart my keyboard and can't put it back together"-threads for the MB into one large thread. Each time I see one of these threads, it's the *same* problem: for whatever reason, someone decided his Macbook keyboard needed to be taken apart and cleaned, and now said someone can't restore proper placement and function to all the keys. I've yet to read a thread where this turned out well.
 
Ok I'm back.

It looks like my space bar is done for good, which I've more or less gotten over. What I'm asking is, is there any way to assign the function of the space bar to another key on the keyboard? Right now, I'm using the on-screen keyboard to get my space bar, and it's a very clunky way to handle it. I looked around in system preferences but didn't see anything.

You might try Keyboard Maestro, but I have no idea how well that would work.

What you need now is a new topcase, which you can get for around $50-100 on ebay. It is dirt simple to replace.

Just out of curiosity, do you have a white macbook or a black one? If you have a white one, I have a spare topcase that I could sell you for a quite reasonable price (i recognize that you are in need) since I have no use for it.
 
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