Tuesday, July 28, 2009

Easily delete text in InDesign/InCopy

Bonnie wrote today and pointed out that on my InDesign CS4 keyboard shortcut reference guide, I've listed the same keyboard shortcut (command-delete) for both "Delete one word to the left" and "Delete one word to the right".

Believe it or not Bonnie, this isn't a typo (though I'll admit it could be more clear!) This brings up an issue that many people don't understand, so I thought it would be worth explaining here.

Some Macintosh keyboards have two delete keys, one that's two rows above the return key, and another that is between the main keys and the numeric keypad, directly above the cursor keys.

On this type of keyboard, the left-most delete key deletes a single character to the left of the text cursor, and the right-most delete key deletes a single character to the right of the text cursor. Likewise, command-left delete key deletes a word to the left of the text cursor, and command-right delete key deletes a word to the right of the text cursor.

If you have a Mac laptop or a smaller Mac keyboard that only has a single delete key, fn-delete deletes one character to the right, and fn-command-delete deletes one word to the right.

On most Windows keyboards, the left-deleting delete key is labeled as "Backspace" and the right-deleting key is labeled as "Delete" so Windows users don't have this confusion.

I've updated the InDesign CS4 keyboard shortcut reference guide to clarify this issue.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I am trying to make the switch from quark to indesign and i was wondering if there is some guide that shows "power keyboard shortcuts"? for instance if you copy an item, how do you paste it in the same exact place on a page - i could do that in quark but not ID. this is one of many shortcuts i'm looking for. any ideas on where to find this type of information? not having this info is really slowing me down. thanks

Keith Gilbert said...

"Paste in place" in InDesign is Command-Option-Shift-V (Mac), Ctr-Alt-Shift-V (Windows). See my keyboard shortcut guide at:

http://gilbertconsulting.com/resources-misc.html

Anonymous said...

This isn't a copy and paste question, but it is in reference to the small Mac keyboard. I'm trying to add a shortcut to my paragraph styles in Indesign. With the old keyboard you would just select an F number or command + a number, but it just doesn't seem to be working for me with this new keyboard... I've tried a combination of fn+command+a number, but that doesn't work either. How do i add in shortcut keys to the paragraph styles with the new keyboard? Cheers