Using menu access keys
In most TreePad menus you will notice that some items have a single letter in their name underlined, e.g. Format in the Main menu. These will be termed menu access keys, since pressing them in succession will expand the menu tree and execute the appropriate function. (You may also see them referred to elsewhere as menu hotkeys.) Although a number of keystrokes may be required to open a menu in this way, menu access keys are useful:
- If a mouse is unavailable;
- If you wish to use the keyboard instead of the mouse and no equivalent keyboard shortcut exists for this command;
- If you wish to automate a particular command using a key macro program.
Note that the method used to execute a menu access key depends on the type of menu:
Press the Alt key together with the underlined letter of the menu item to open the drop-down submenu.
Example 1: Press Alt+V to open the Main menu's View submenu, then press A to view the Article pane only. Here, the hotkeys are (Alt+V),A in that order. Note the following:
- Although Example 1 will also work if you keep holding down the Alt key when you press V, it is not necessary to do this.
- Menu access key commands are not case-sensitive, although they are depicted in upper case in the manual.
- Releasing and pressing just the Alt key when a submenu is open will close the submenu.
- You can also close a submenu by pressing the Esc key.
- The menu access key will not work if the menu itself is disabled. E.g., Main menu ⁄ Tree is disabled when the Article pane has focus, so all Tree menu access keys are also disabled. However, you can work around this by creating a keyboard macro which first forces a change of pane. See Macros make it easier.
Example 2. Press Alt+S,T to open the Main menu's Search tree window (an example of a dialog window), then press Alt+N to toggle the Nodes tick box in the What to search: pane.
Simply press the letter key.
Example 3. With the focus in the Article pane, press Shift+F10 to open the Article context menu (an example of a context menu), then press G, S to go to the start of the current article. The Alt key is not required for hotkeys in context menus.
Note: For clarity, menu access keys will not be specifically listed in the manual along with other commands as you can easily work out the key sequence you need by following the menus.
