Re: Keyboard shortcuts for menus
- From: Elliott Roper <nospam@xxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 04 Oct 2007 12:35:15 +0100
In article
<primula.vulgaris-C778D5.10181304102007@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
primrose <primula.vulgaris@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
In Winword you can easily pick a menu without using the mouse: Alt + a
letter from the menu name. You can see which letter you need because
it's underlined in the menu bar. Likewise, when a menu is open you can
pick a command by typing the letter which is underlined in the name of
the command. All this underlining doesn't look pretty on the screen, but
it works and it's fast.
I'm not sure how to do the same thing in the Mac version. I know that
Ctrl-F2 opens the menu under the blue apple, and that you can move to
another menu by hitting the right arrow. But isn't there some way of
going straight to the menu you want?
Sure, type the initial letter(s) of the main menu item, followed by
down-arrow to open the menu. See more below.
Once you have the right menu, typing the first letter of a command
sometimes highlights that command, but by no means always. For example,
in the Insert menu, typing C highlights first Comment, then Caption, but
not Cross-reference. Is there some logic to this?
Can any other mouseophobes help please? I'm using Word v.11.2, OS
10.3.9.
You are almost there. What you describe is Mac wide, and is a little
better than you know. Just keep typing. e.g. ^F2 I down CR gets you
cross-reference in your example above. Often a little dance with the up
and down keys is helpful. You can move into submenus with the keys as
well.
It is *much* better than the ugly clunkiness on the dark side.
You might find it useful to modify some of the Mac wide shortcuts. I
changed ^F2 to ^M, both as a mnemonic, and to keep my left pinkie in
the pink.
Once you get the hang of it, it is remarkably quick and easy to
remember all the shortcuts, since the same tricks work everywhere on
your Mac.
The 'just keep typing' trick is especially useful in the font menu,
particularly if you have a zillion fonts. Turn off the wysiwyg font
list preference to make this work. Then to get into Zapfino say, I'd
hit ^MFOdownZdown return. (that extra down was to skip zapf dingbats
and the fo up front gets you past 'file' at the top level.)
Practice with the Finder in column mode. (cmd-3) It is amazing how long
you can work without looking for your mouse underneath all the paper in
your paperless office.
If you have Tiger (oops! you haven't - wait for Leopard it is only
weeks away), experiment with using spotlight as a launcher. That is
another fabulous toy for the musophobe. I set cmd-space for simple
spotlight so that cmd-space w usually gets Word as the top hit, then
cmd-ret is all you need to bring it to focus or launch it.
Don't forget cmd-` and cmd-tab for leaping from window to window and
app to app.
Finally, Word has lots of built-in shortcuts, and you can add your own
for any command. Sometimes they work better than burrowing down through
menus with the keyboard.
This post was constructed and the advice tested without harming any
mice.
--
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- From: primrose
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