As we have illustrated in previous tutorials, ShareScope includes a host of intuitive features to help you navigate the program with increased speed and efficiency. In addition, we have also learned that much of the program can be customised to suit your own personal style and preferences.

In this tutorial, we look at how you can use keyboard shortcuts (or accelerators) to quickly access the features and functions you use most often. This may be an alternative to using the mouse to access commands via menus, dialogs and toolbars in ShareScope.

ShareScope includes a combination of pre-programmed system accelerators, customisable shortcuts and currently unassigned functions.

System accelerators
Creating and editing accelerators

As previously mentioned, ShareScope includes a number of default "system" keyboard accelerators which are built into the program. For example, pressing F5 will automatically redirect you to the ALL list, and pressing F6 will take you to the Shares list.

If there is a system keyboard accelerator associated with a particular command, it is shown on the menu item for that command and on the corresponding toolbar button as shown below:

For more information on adding keyboard shortcuts to toolbar buttons, please see Tutorial 21 - Customising Toolbars.

The majority of system accelerators can be used in any screen. Some however, are restricted for use in a single screen only, for example the list, graph or transaction screen.

General Navigation shortcuts:

Settings shortcuts:

The following Settings shortcuts are determined according to the window you are currently viewing. For example, pressing F3 in the graph screen will move to Graph Setting 2; in the news screen to News Table 2 and so on.

List shortcuts:

Screen / Window shortcuts:

Other functions:

List screen only:

Graph screen only:

Transactions screen only:

You can create your own keyboard shortcuts or edit existing shortcuts via the Keyboard accelerators dialog which can be accessed by clicking on Tools and then selecting Keyboard Accelerators... from the drop down menu.

ShareScope Gold:

ShareScope Plus/Pro:

The Keyboard accelerators dialog offers 10 different tabs to select from, each containing a list of related functions, as the image below illustrates:

In this example, the All tab includes all available accelerators that can be used.

To the right of the Show graph function we can see a keyboard accelerator description (Ctrl + F9) - denoting that a key combination is already assigned for this action. By contrast, the Toggle the log scale option just below does not; meaning that it is currently unassigned.

If the accelerator is shown in grey, it is built into the system and cannot be changed (although you may assign an additional accelerator to this action).

If a key combination is listed in black, it is not built into ShareScope and can be changed. As you can see from the image below, View triggered alerts (grey) can be changed, but Show broker forecasts for the current company (black) cannot.

To display a list of all the shortcuts that are currently configured and which you can change, click on the Review button to the right of the dialog. This will show the following:

Whilst this list is displayed, you can tick the System accelerators option to display a list of the shortcuts that cannot be changed.

Click OK to return to the Keyboard accelerators dialog.

To change an accelerator or to assign an additional key combination to a system accelerator, select the required action and then press the keys that you wish to use.

For example, if you want to assign Shift + I as the shortcut to add an indicator, press the Shift key followed by the I key. The key combination appears in the text box below.

If the combination you have chosen is already in use this is displayed in the Currently assigned to box. To see which keys are available to use click on Available keys. Once finished, click on Set to save your changes.

If there are two accelerators associated with a particular function, the system accelerator is displayed in the System accelerator box and the additional accelerator is shown in the list.

All the alphabet, numeric and punctuation mark keys listed below can be used with additional combinations of Shift and Ctrl to allow a total of 92 available key combinations.

; (semi-colon)

[ (left square bracket)

] (right square bracket)

_ (underscore)

= (equals)

` (extra mark)

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Remember, if you have any trouble finding or using any of these features, please don’t hesitate to call our Customer Support team. They will be delighted to help.