Be More Productive with Your Favorite Text Editor

EditPad Pro Tips and Tricks

• Assigning two-key alt+letter shortcuts to menu items
• Duplicate text as you type
• Keeping only lines with search matches
• Keyboard and mouse shortcuts to select and edit text
• Keystroke macro to delete all lines with search matches
• Line breaks in Windows, UNIX and Macintosh text files
• Selecting a large block of text

Assigning Two-Key Alt+Letter Shortcuts

If you've upgraded to EditPad Pro 6 from an earlier version or a competing text editor, you may find that some of the Alt+Letter key combinations to access menu items no longer work or trigger a different command.

A new feature in EditPad Pro 6 is the ability to assign two-key shortcuts to any command or menu item. E.g. if you can't get over the fact that Alt+E, F no longer opens the search panel, you could assign this key combination to the Search|Show Search Panel menu item, instead of the default Ctrl+F.

To do so, open the Options menu, click on the Configure Toolbars and Menus item, and switch to the Keyboard Shortcuts tab. Click on the Show Search Panel item in the list with available commands. Turn on the "two-key shortcut" radio button. Click on the "shortcut key" box and press Alt+E. Click on the "2nd key" box and press F. Click OK and from now on Alt+E, F will open the search panel.

Note that any Alt+letter shortcuts you assign take precedence over the menu items. If you assign Alt+E, F as described above, you can no longer use Alt+E to open the Edit menu. To access the Edit menu, you'll need to press Alt, release Alt, and then press E. Incidentally, this method of accessing the menu works in any Windows application that uses a standard menu bar.

Another change between EditPad Pro 5 and 6 is that the checkboxes on the search panel no longer have Alt+letter hotkeys. To set search options with the keyboard in version 6, you'll need to press Shift+Ctrl+F to open the search options screen, then press the underlined letters of the options you want to toggle, and then press Enter to confirm the changes. If this is too laborious for you, EditPad Pro 6 allows you to assign any key combination to any of the search options, including the Alt+letter combinations from EditPad Pro 5. Just like in version 5, these Alt+letter combinations will take precedence over the main menu.

EditPad Pro 6's two-key shortcuts feature also makes it possible for EditPad Pro to emulate the traditional two-key shortcuts used by the venerable WordStar word processor. In Options, Configure Toolbars and Menus, Keyboard Shortcuts, click on the "apply WordStar shortcut keys" button and turn on the "use WordStar navigation keys" checkbox.

Page URL: http://www.editpadpro.com/tricktwokey.html
Page last updated: 26 July 2006
Site last updated: 20 November 2008

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