Family Historian User Group

Is there a keyboard shortcut (key combination without using the mouse) to move from a highlighted individual in the View -> Record Lists -> Individuals to the Focus Window for a highlighted individual? Pressing Enter just expands the Individual's record.

Same idea:
Is there a keyboard shortcut to invoke the Focus button?

ID:5030

Yes!  You can press Alt+V to open the View menu and then F to Display in Focus Window.

This works for many Menu Bar commands.
e.g.
Alt+F = File Menu
Alt+E = Edit Menu
Alt+R = Reports Menu

Then another letter often invokes one of the Menu options.

However, it requires some trial and error to discover which letter does what, because they are not documented in the Help under Keyboard and Mouse Shortcuts.

VERY helpful -- thank-you for your replies!!

I can now toggle without a mouse between the Records window and the Focus window. Some experimentation reveals that the F6 key enables me to tab in the Records window to the Find (surname, first name) field (and search there for an individual) and then highlight that individual within the Individual Records pane. A useful way to navigate my database without mousing about!!

Fred

Did you know that in the Records Window you can simply type a letter and the first Individual whose surname starts with that letter is highlighted and brought into view?
See the Help > Family Historian Help > Keyboard and Mouse Shortcuts for more details.

tatewise said:
... it requires some trial and error to discover which letter does what ...

The underlined letter in the name of each menu item, and in the menu drop-down lists, indicates which letter does what.  I think this is fairly standard Windows behaviour.

It is also possible to modify the documented behaviour of the arrow keys.  If you press and release the Alt key you can then use the left and right arrow keys to select the required menu, and then use the up and down keys to select the required item (useful for those items without an underlined letter).

tatewise, is documentation of the alt-keys for the menu bar necessary? If you hit the Alt key, the available letters in the top-level menu bar are underlined. If you select one of the available letters, the next possible letters are underlined in the drop-down menu.(I had thought this was standard Windows behaviour but you may know differently).

tatewise, thank you for sharing that typing a single letter in the individuals list hightlights the first individual whose surname starts with that letter...yes, I knew about that but find it to be of limited value -- in other software one can type as many characters as desired to move about in a list (i.e. if there are 200 Sanders and a Smith, I could type 'Sm' instead of typing 'S' 201 times to advance to the Smith. In fact, I am so used to having this 'Sm' functionality that in FH I often end up at the first surname starting with 'M', because I unconsciously typed 'Sm'!!

That is why the F6 key is so useful (I can now tab to the search box and then back to the list of individuals).

Fred

PS Thanks to everyone for your thoughts...I appreciate the sharing!!


tatewise said:
Did you know that in the Records Window you can simply type a letter and the first Individual whose surname starts with that letter is highlighted and brought into view?
See the Help > Family Historian Help > Keyboard and Mouse Shortcuts for more details.

I find that I do the same thing all the time. It would be a very nice enhancement if typing multiple letters in any FH list took you to the entry in the list that started with those letters.