Hot keys are simply keyboard keys which when pressed send an entire command
to the computer. There are also multiple-stroke hot keys; the Ctrl-Alt-Del sequence used to log on is one of these. As you will shortly see, there are far too many for most people to know them all, but they can still be very useful, and can save you a lot of time. If you spend most of your time in one application, you should learn the hot keys for that application.

The twelve "F" keys, or Function keys, are built-in hot keys. For example,
in most Windows NT programs, if you press F1, the Help window opens. These keys can be used alone or in combination with Shift, Ctrl, Alt, Ctrl & Shift, Alt & Shift, and sometimes Ctrl & Alt & Shift. This gives you 84 combinations, though not all combinations may be in use.

Since you are likely in Microsoft Word right now, let's use that as an
example. These steps should apply to most programs. If you are not using the Assistant, press F1 to open Help, click the Find tab and type "function". In window 3 you will find "Function keys". Double click that, and you'll get an explanation of the function keys that are defined for Word. (There is also an option to print out a table; you should do this for any applications you use frequently.) You'll see there are some fifty pre-defined functions. You will probably only need a dozen or so, and just a little bit of practice should be enough to make them quite useful.

If you are using the Assistant, press F1 to start the Assistant, type "function key" in the Search box and click Search. In the next screen click Shortcut Keys, then at the bottom of the list which appears, click "Usefunction keys". This displays the explanation of the function keys asdescribed above.

User Defined Hot Keys

Many applications also allow you to define hot keys. In Microsoft Word, go to the menu bar and click Tools, select the Customize option, then click the Keyboard button. Make a selection from the Categories box, then the command you want in the Commands box. Click the "Press new shortcut key" box, then press the hot key you want to assign to that command (such as Ctrl-Z). If the hot key is already in use, the current definition will display; otherwise it will appear as unassigned. Click the Assign button and it's done.

As you know, shortcuts can be used to open applications, documents, graphics, etc. - anything you can open from Windows NT Explorer. You cancreate hot keys of your own to activate the shortcuts. Simply create the shortcut and place it on your desktop, in your Microsoft Office Toolbar, or in your start menu. (Your start menu is located on your boot partition as \Winnt \Profiles \<username> \Start, where <username> is your logon name.) Then right click on the shortcut, click Properties, then the Shortcut tab. Click the Shortcut key box. By default it says "none", and you can't edit it as you normally edit text. But press the desired hot key (such as

Ctrl-Alt-Z) and it will change. It may seem a bit odd, because when you press Ctrl or Shift, you get Ctrl + Alt, but when you press all two or three keys in the hot key, it will appear correctly.

Note that for these user-defined keys you can use any of the twelve function keys by itself, or almost any other key on the board if combined with:

Shift

Ctrl

Alt

Shift+Ctrl

Shift+Alt

Ctrl+Alt

Shift+Ctrl+Alt

This gives you over 260 possibilities. This is good because you need to watch out for keys that are already assigned. You can define F1 to open, say, Windows NT Explorer, but if you do, it will no longer open Help in any applications.

I do not know of any way to create other user-defined hot keys independent of applications. I don't know how useful this would be, but if any of you know of such a command or program, please let me know.
 

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