In the last newsletter I described how you could easily create a shortcut on the desktop to any programme you use regularly, and I promised to add to this by describing how to access this shortcut even if you can't see the desktop.

Here's how to set up the shortcut access from the keyboard.

1) First create the shortcut on the desktop as described in last month's newsletter.

2) Click the shortcut icon with the right mouse button, and from the drop down menu, select "Properties" and left click..

3) The shortcut dialogue window should have two tabs at the top (General and Shortcut). Click the Shortcut tab to bring its window to the front.

4) Click in the slot marked "Shortcut Key", then tap the letter key on the keyboard you would like to use as your shortcut key.

If you chose letter A for example, the slot will now show Ctrl+Alt+A.
Now you can "OK" to close the shortcut properties window.

5) Anytime you want to run the programme this shortcut points to, just hold down the Ctrl and Alt keys together and tap your chosen shortcut letter key.

Why would you want to do all this? Well, here's an example:-

At the moment I'm typing this using a very nice freeware word processor called Abiword. I can open Abiword anytime I want it because there's a shortcut to Abiword on the desktop, and I've set up the shortcut so that I can activate it from the keyboard at any time, using Ctrl+Alt+A.

So, if I'm reading a web site, or an email that someone has sent me, and I want to copy something from the web site or the email and use it in another document, I just highlight the text I want, use Ctrl+C keys to copy the text to the clipboard, then open Abiword, again using the keyboard (Ctrl+Alt+A), and paste the text into Abiword using Ctrl+V keys.

Remember too, you can easily switch between different programmes that are running, just by clicking the button for the window you wish to see, in the taskbar at the bottom of the screen (or use Alt + TAb keys - each tap of the Tab key moving you to a different open window).

John Selby, technical bloke.

First printed in SNN Newsletter May 2002