Hotkeys and Shortcut keys

Many menu items have a hotkey and/or a shortcut key.  These are special key combinations that are helpful for people who are more comfortable using a keyboard than the mouse.  Hotkeys are identified by an underscore character in the name of the menu item, e.g., “File”, “New”.  These allow you to hold down the Alt-key, which is usually found next to the space bar on the keyboard, then hit the underlined letter to produce the same action as if you clicked that name with the mouse.  We show this using the notation <Alt>+key – e.g., the hotkey for the file menu item is shown as <Alt>+F.  Be sure that you depress both keys together, holding the <Alt> key down a little bit longer than the letter key.  (Some people try hitting both keys simultaneously, as if they’re hitting two keys on a piano keyboard.  Quite often, this approach does not produce the desired results.)

For instance, you could create a new file by clicking the mouse on the “File” menu item, then clicking on the “New” item beneath it.  Using hotkeys, you could type <Alt>+F followed by <Alt>+N.  Or, more simply, while you’re holding down the <Alt> key, hit the ‘F’ key followed by the ‘N’ key, then release the <Alt> key.

You might notice that several menu items, e.g., the New Item on the File menu, show something to the right that looks like ‘Ctrl+N’.  This is called a Shortcut key sequence.  Whereas executing a command with hotkeys often requires several keystrokes, shortcut keys can do the same thing with just one keystroke.   Shortcut keys work the same as hotkeys, using the <Ctrl> key instead of the <Alt> key.   To create a new file, for example, you can hold down the <Ctrl> key and hit the ‘N’ key, which is shown as <Ctrl>+N here.  (In the menus, this appears simply as ‘Ctrl+N’.) 

Not all menu items have associated shortcut keys because there are only 26 shortcut keys, one for each letter of the alphabet.  Hotkeys, in contrast, are localized to each menu and submenu.  For hotkeys to work, the menu item must be visible whereas shortcut keys work at any time.  For instance, if you are typing data into a text file and want to create a note in a new window, you may simply hit the shortcut key sequence, <Ctrl>+N to generate a new window.  After you type the note, you can hit <Ctrl>+S to save it, give it a file name, hit the enter key [this part doesn’t make sense]; then you can hit the <Alt>+F+C hotkey sequence to close the file (there is no shortcut key for closing a file).