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• • December 15, 2009 at 6:44 pm #54255
    Mike Rankin

    Keymaster

    I just moved to a new desk at work and when I unpacked my stuff I decided to put the InDesignSecrets Keyboard shortcuts poster on the wall in front of me so that I might learn/re-learn some KBSCs through subliminal means. I'm loving it.

    One thing it has already motivated me to do: change the KBSC for Toggle Keyboard Focus in Control Panel. By default, it's cmd+6 on the Mac, which never sunk into my brain. So I switched it to cmd+t, which used to open the Character panel (which I never used anyway). This seems to be working out well, as I usually want to be in the Control panel when I'm working with text, so my brain and fingers are loving this change.

    Then I went and made cmd+opt+t the shortcut for Toggle Character and Paragraph Modes in Control Panel. It used to open the Paragraph panel (which I never used either). So if I do that before cmd+t I can jump into character or paragraph modes directly from the text frame. Further awesomeness.

    So now I'm on the lookout for cool shortcut hacks that anyone else has made. Replaced any unmemorizable, finger-spraining defaults with something better? If you have, please share 'em.

  • December 15, 2009 at 7:28 pm #54258
    Anonymous

    Inactive

    Hmmm not at work right now – but off the top of my head

    Inside Tables I have

    CTRL m for merging cells

    CTRL shift m for unmerging

    CTRL Tab for inserting a tab inside a cell (don't ask there are reasons though :) )

    I have assigned CTRL 9 for a script PreserveLocalFormating,

    then CTRL = for clearing local overrides.

    (handy when importing word files – run script for creating character styles (preservelocalforamtting) and then run script to clear the overridesn which seems to work quite well).

    I'll see what else I have tomorrow – can't remember off the top of my head :)

  • December 15, 2009 at 8:51 pm #54260
    Theunis De Jong

    Member

    Ctrl+Alt+F for Find Fonts, Ctrl+Alt+G for Glyphs, Ctrl+Alt+J for Merge Cells (“Join”).

    F3 plus a few modifiers for instant Uppercase, Lowercase, and Title Case — never can remember where I put where, but it's all somewhere under F3.

    Alt+N for a Number space — to assign, it needs a bit of trickery under Windows (enter “Ctrl+Alt+N”, then select “Ctrl+” with the mouse and select Delete from the mouse menu ).

  • December 15, 2009 at 10:00 pm #54261
    David Blatner

    Keymaster

    While Tim Cole is no longer with Adobe, his blog lives on in the archives… he did a wonderful series of interviews on this subject, which you can find here: https://blogs.adobe.com/indesig…..shortcuts/

    And of course Casey's shortcut blogs on his InDesign1200 site…

  • December 16, 2009 at 12:29 am #54266
    Dwayne Harris

    Member

    I have similar ones to hank so far as control M, control T for tables. I also use control F to place footnotes. Control L to make type all lowercase, and control U for uppercase. Mine are very basic.

    For most of my font toggling I keep my default settings (i.e., Shift + Apple + I for italic; Shift + Apple B for bold, etc.).

    And I keep a copy of my keyboard shortcuts in case something happens to my machine or if I have to work on another work station for some reason. I just copy 'em over.

  • December 16, 2009 at 12:41 am #54267
    James Fritz

    Member

    Some of my fav's

    opt+m = merge cells

    opt+shift+m = unmerge cells

    cmd+down arrow = select content (a photo in a frame)

    cmd+up arrow = select frame

    ctrl+o = object layer options

  • December 16, 2009 at 9:25 am #54268
    Anonymous

    Inactive

    Ok also have

    Alt Dead Key – for inserting a footnote

    (the dead key is the key beside number 1 on the top left of the keyboard (UK English it is) that when hit appears to type nothing but it's for inserting a diatrical mark on letters like à è ù ò)

    I find it handy for typing text that needs footnotes I can almost just mash the left side of my keyboard to invoke a footnote and then back to typing :)

    I have other scripts assigned shortcuts too

    Like others I have a need to make all text uppercase and lowercase from time to time so keyboard shortcuts for those

    – but I also assigned the KBSC SHIFT CTRL ALT ; for making things Smart Title Case (the script SmartTitleCase is very useful)

    Again I can be typing away and then highlight a heading using the keyboard, mash the left corner of my keyboard and hit the “;” key – I just find it faster.

  • December 16, 2009 at 7:11 pm #54274
    Mike Rankin

    Keymaster

    Awesome stuff. Thanks for the replies!

  • December 16, 2009 at 11:59 pm #54280
    Aleta El Sheikh

    Participant

    I use End Nested Style Here a lot for my church newsletter's events page, where either the time or the first 2-3 words are bolded, so I made Shift+Ctrl+F1 so I could control how many words get the boldness. (Thanks to David and Ann-Marie for turning me on to custom keyboard shortcut sets, which they covered way back on Podcast #003.)

  • December 17, 2009 at 12:32 am #54281
    Joe C

    Member

    One I use quite a bit is Transform Sequence Again Individually, Shift+Ctrl+E.

  • December 22, 2009 at 1:43 pm #54315
    Anne-Marie Concepcion

    Member

    I use Ctrl-F (Mac) for Fill with Placeholder Text, which I do a ton of, especially when experiementing or demo-ing.

    And Ctrl-U for Update All Assignments Whether They Need it Or Not.

    AM

  • December 23, 2009 at 2:14 pm #54322
    Mike Rankin

    Keymaster

    AM-

    Yes! A shortcut for placeholder text is a must, 'specially for people who are always tinkering with type to see “what would happen if…”

    Also, here's a useful link: the main keyboard shortcuts page on InDesign's online Help.

  • December 24, 2009 at 3:40 pm #54327
    Bob Levine

    Participant

    I swapped the paste and paste in place KBSCs. I see no need to paste anything in the middle of the page. I also added KBSCs for all of the change case commands. I used ctrl/cmd+U for upper case, ctrl/cmd+S for sentence case and so on.

    To do that I took advantage of the fact that you can specify that the KBSC only work when editing text, so ctrl/cmd+S still saves my file if I'm not in text editing mode.

  • December 29, 2009 at 5:51 pm #54335
    rhadin

    Member

    Well, I have to admit that I'm behind the times. I don't really have a “favorite” KBSC but that's because I probably work a bit differently than most of you gurus. I rely instead on a piece of hardware (Xkeys Professional) and a piece of software (MacroExpress) to handle all my shortcuts (other than the very common, universal ones like Copy and Paste). I've been using this combination for years, probably at least 10 years, and couldn't be happier.

    What I like best is that MacroExpress lets me create “keyboards” for each of my programs, with macro functions or calling of a script assignable to a single key combination. XKeys lets me assign a specific key combination to a single button. Confused? Well, I'm not doing a very good job of explaining this so let me try it this way, using MS Word as an example (it works the same with InDesign, Photoshop, and other programs).

    I use a macro when editing in MS Word that I call a Toggle macro. (The Toggle macro is part of the EditTools macro set for editors.) The macro lets me “toggle” from “1” to “one” or “ACT” to “American Council of Techology” or to/from almost anything I want, including changing “alpha” to the Greek letter alpha (it comes with an editor so I can add or delete what I want for future use). However, there are limits to the number of keyboard assignments one can make and still keep handy all of a programs functionality, so I use the more difficult key combinations for these kinds of macros. Thus I assigned Toggle to the keyboard combination Ctrl+Alt+Shift+M. But rather than having to press that key combination (or even remember it), I assigned a button on XKeys to trigger that key combination.

    With InDesign, I assign keyboard combinations to things that I normally do to such long key combinations and then use my XKeys to activate it. It also lets me group similar functions across programs, thus I can use the same buttons for tables in all programs (or most programs) and thus not have to try to remember what the key combination was in program A and what it was in program B.

  • January 5, 2010 at 9:50 am #54370
    Anonymous

    Inactive

    Forgot about these cool one's I use.

    CTRL + ALT + Arrow Keys

    For alligning objects to the margins – left arrow alligns to left margin, right to right margin, up to top margin, down to bottom margin.

    Time saver.

  • March 25, 2010 at 1:54 pm #55309
    Lemonshrew

    Member

    I have

    GREP Find – command + option + F
    GREP Change – command + option + control + F
    GREP Change/Find – option + control + F

    This way I only have to lift my pointer finger or my ring finger as I'm searching through the document. Also, the Find/Change dialog box isn't blocking my view.

    @rhadin

    I frequently use Butler (https://manytricks.com/butler/) and my NuLOOQ to automate repetitive tasks. Butler lets you program a series of keystrokes, (for example: command + down / command + shift + down / delete), and then lets you to give this set of keystrokes a keyboard shortcut.
    I set one of my programmable NuLOOQ buttons to type that shortcut, so all I have to do is hit one button whenever, for example, I want to delete the paragraph following the one my cursor is on.
    My question is, can I do the same thing with X-Keys? NuLOOQ only has 5 programmable buttons. I would love to have 16 or 24 or more.

    Thanks.

  • March 26, 2010 at 10:05 am #55340
    Jennie

    Member

    I do a lot of forms and passes for schools and use

    ctrl+left arrow for flush space.

    I come from an old, old, old, typesetting background and really missed “insert space” until I discovered flush space.

    Also command+m for merge in tables, and I think I need to add Eugene's ctrl+tab in tables.

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