Tip of the day: Create custom keyboard shortcuts

Tips, Windows 1 Minute

It’s annoying to have to hunt around on the desktop or drill through cascading menus to find the programs you use every day. Why not assign keyboard shortcuts to those programs? As long as you follow the rules, these shortcuts can be effective.

This technique works only with Windows shortcuts, which can point to a program, a document file, or a Web address – you can’t assign a shortcut directly to an executable file or a document file. In addition, the shortcut must be stored on the desktop or in the All Programs menu – Windows ignores your instructions completely if the shortcut is stored anywhere else. Finally, the shortcut key combination must consist of a letter or number plus at least two of the following three keys: Ctrl, Alt, Shift.

To assign a keyboard shortcut, right-click the shortcut icon and choose Properties. On the General tab, click in the Shortcut key box and press the key combination you want to use (if you press only a letter or number, Windows adds Ctrl+Alt to the key assignment). Click OK to save your change. In the example below, I’ve assigned the key combination Ctrl+Alt+Shift+C to the Windows Calculator; now, from anywhere within Windows, all I have to do is press those keys to pop up the calculator instantly.

Shortcut_key_calc

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Published by Ed Bott

Tech journalist. Author of 25+ books. ZDNET Contributing Editor since 2006. Contact info: https://edbott.com/contact-me/

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8 thoughts on “Tip of the day: Create custom keyboard shortcuts”

  1. This is great information. Until now, I never properly understood how keyboard shortcuts actually worked (i.e. that they had to be either on the desktop or in All Programs).

    Incidentally, this website seems to be loading very slowly lately. All of my other usual haunts are loading at normal speed.

    Ken

  4. Do you also know where the mapping of the shortcuts is saved? For e.g. if I assign a shortcut Ctrl+Alt+Y to Yahoo messenger and Ctrl+Alt+M to MSN messenger, does Windows write this mapping to a properties file ? Where is this stored, and can it be manually edited or viewed ?

  5. is it possible to create a custom shortcut that inserts text such as the date, time and name.

  6. Landrew,

    You can’t do that with Windows alone, but it’s relatively easy to do with a third-party add-in. I would recommend ActiveWords for this functionality and much, much more. They offer a 60-day free trial. After the free trial is up the basic version costs $49.95 and allows you to install it on all computers you use.

  7. Hi,

    Those shortcuts seems to work nice in Windows XP only if the shortcuts target applications for which the publisher signature can be verified, such as Microsoft Word or the Microsoft Calculator. But I’m a software designer and I would like to use shortcuts no matter what the application is because my own little tools won’t get digitally signed.

    Any idea on how to make it work anyway ?

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