Hey speed demons, so what do you do when your keyboard shortcuts aren't working?
So maybe you find a cool new shortcut online, like paste special,
new slide in PowerPoint or full screen web browsing in chrome,
but once you get on your keyboard and hit it, nothing happens,
which is not only frustrating because you want use that keyboard shortcut,
but then you have to spend a bunch of time hunting around trying to figure out
why it's not working.
So I've gone ahead and pull together five combinations I see to help you fix
your keyboard shortcuts and help get you to happy hour.
And the very first issue is an inversed function key.
And by that I mean most new computers this is my keyboard on my Lenovo.
Start with these media keys set to the default,
which is fine except that you lose out on your F2 to edit a formula in excel,
your F5 to present full screen in PowerPoint,
your full screen web browsing in chrome and to turn anything into a pdf in any
of the Microsoft office programs.
So those don't work when your media keys are set to default,
which to fix that you need to do one of two things.
The first thing is you either need to throw in the FN key,
so Shift F5 to present from the current slide in PowerPoint becomes Fn plus
shift plus F5 and to full screen web browse in chrome or Internet explorer
becomes Fn plus F11. So you have to throw in this Fn key,
which is why I typically recommend inversing your function keys back to the
default so don't have to have that extra key and by that I mean you basically
need to restart your computer and set these function keys up top so that they're
not the media keys, they're just the Excel PowerPoint, Full screen,
web browsing pdf and some of these other cool things.
And then when you do want to use the media key, then you throw in the FN key.
For example, this one would be mute, so Fn plus F1 would be the mute.
Once you've inversed your function keys and if you need help inversing your
function keys,
just let me know in the comments section below here on youtube and I'll shoot a
video to help you out. So that's the first issue that trips up your shortcuts.
Inversed function keys.
The next thing that can trip up your keyboard shortcuts are your language bar
settings. So if you're using multiple languages on your computer, I have English,
French and Chinese all set up as keyboards on my computer.
What happens is the hotkeys to flip between your different languages can
override your default keyboard shortcuts. So what you need to do,
and I'll show you how to do this in a second,
you need to come find the advanced settings of your language bar and you want to
come and double check that your hotkeys aren't overriding your default office
hotkeys. So what you need to do, just hit the windows key to get there.
Just type language. You want to come and find your language keyboard options.
Once it opens, you're going to scroll down to the bottom.
Advanced date time and region settings. You're going to click language again,
this is a lot of clicks to get there.
You want to come to advanced settings here on the left.
And if you just scroll down, you can see the language bar hotkeys there.
Here's where you can change the sequence.
First though just eyeball to see if you're hotkeys are being overridden.
So for example,
in the Chinese keyboard in PowerPoint control space bar is the shortcut to
change your formatting back to the slide master's formatting.
So here I would need to change that if I was going to in Chinese be using
PowerPoint so this shortcut wasn't overwritten.
So that's the next thing to double check.
The next thing that can trip up your keyboard shortcuts are international
keyboards.
So most keyboard shortcuts online are quoted using the US keyboard,
which looks just like this. So for example, if you're using a French keyboard,
notice all of the different accents on here that do not exist in the English
keyboard. So you need to double check what your keys are.
You can also see that the Q and A are inversed down here on the French keyboard.
So if you do use an international keyboard,
you just need to make sure you double check what the keystrokes are on your
computer as all the shortcuts online will be quoted using the US keyboard
standard. Now similar to international keyboards,
the Mac keyboard is entirely different than the PC keyboard,
which is how most shortcuts are quoted online.
So if you're on a Mac you just need to pay attention to your command option
control fn and your shift key,
the PC shortcut you're looking at is probably some combination of all of these
keys and whatever is being called for on the shortcut. For example,
the PC shortcut for group in PowerPoint is control G to group.
On a Mac it's Fn option command plus G so it's four keys instead of two.
So if you're on a Mac, that might be tripping up your keyboard shortcuts.
Now another common thing that can be tripping up your keyboard shortcuts are
what I call program trolls. So these are programs you install on your computer,
like Evernote, GoToWebinar,
Skype and Camtasia that overwrite your default programs. So this happens to you,
all you to do is go find the program that you recently installed.
So for EverNote for example, I would open it up.
You want to go and find the options setting for that program and you want to
find the shortcut keys, which also might be called hotkeys in your program.
Once you're there, just like the language bar setting.
You want to see what the default keyboard shortcuts are because these,
as you install them, will become the primary keyboard shortcuts.
So once you find them, you can see here for create new note,
I've cleared that out, paste clipboard,
I've cleared that out because I'm using it in another program.
If you wanted to change the, this is Win A, so Windows plus A to copy selection.
If you wanted to use this in a different program,
you'd want to clear this out and either write your own keyboard shortcut,
whatever it's going to be, or just leave it blank like I've done here. So again,
that's what I call program trolls, and for sure EverNote, GoToWebinar, Skype,
and Camtasia are four programs that will overwrite your default programs.
So if you've lost a keyboard shortcut, go check those programs first.
So those are five common shortcut issues that will trip up your keyboard
shortcuts and you can share this video with your colleagues if they get stuck so
you don't have to troubleshoot it on your own.
If you found this video helpful or learn something new,
please let me know by giving me a thumbs up here on YouTube so I know what kind
of content to continue to add to my channel. And if I missed a good fix,
please share your fix below in the comment section so that everybody can keep
learning.
If you're just looking for PowerPoint resources to help get you to happy hour,
including pdf cheat sheets and video series.
Just look for the links directly beneath this video.
This is Taylor from Nuts to Bolts, Speed Training and I'll see you at happy hour.