Customizing Keyboard Shortcuts

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You can use the Keyboard tab on the Customize dialog box to establish your choice of shortcut keys for any of the available commands. You can assign more than one shortcut key for any command. You can delete or change key assignments, and you can assign shortcut keys for each editor. You can also reset all shortcut keys to their default settings.

What do you want to do?

Assign a shortcut key

Delete a shortcut key

Reset all shortcut keys to their default value

To assign a shortcut key

  1. On the Tools menu, click Customize, and then click the Keyboard tab.

  2. In the Editor drop-down list, select the editor to which you want to assign the shortcut key. For example, select Text if you want to assign a shortcut key that will be available when you are working in the text editor.

  3. In the Categories list, select the menu that contains the command to which you want to assign the shortcut key.

  4. In the Commands list, select the command to which you want to assign the shortcut key.

  5. Put the cursor in the Press New Shortcut Key box, press the shortcut key or key combination that you want, and click Assign.

    If you press a key or key combination that is invalid, no key is displayed. You cannot assign key combinations with ESC, F1, or combinations such as CTRL+ALT+DEL that are already being used by your operating system.

    If you press a key or key combination that is currently assigned to another command, that command appears under Currently Assigned To.

Note   If you use any of the incremental search commands (IncrementalSearch, IncrementalSearchBack, IncrementalSearchRE, IncrementalSearchREBack), you can modify the search by toggling the word mode (CTRL+W), regular expression mode (CTRL+T), and case-sensitive mode (CTRL+C). These keystrokes are not bindable and only affect the incremental search command.

To delete a shortcut key

  1. On the Tools menu, click Customize, and then click the Keyboard tab.

  2. On the Editor, Categories, and Commands lists, select the location for the shortcut key you want to delete.

  3. In the Current Keys list, select the shortcut key you want to delete and click Remove.

To reset all shortcut keys to their default values

  1. On the Tools menu, click Customize, and then click the Keyboard tab.

  2. Click Reset All.