I learned to run Excel ( and 123 before it) in the old days when almost everything could be done from the keyboard. Essentially just type the first letter of an item in a menu and then the first letter of an item in the first submenu, etc. Much, much, much faster.
I have recreated that capability in KM to delete a highlighted block (~db), delete the column of a highlighted cell (~dc), delete the row of a highlighted cell (~dr), format the highlighted cells (~fe), format the column width of a highlighted cell (~fo) [the last two have the same first letter so had to use the second letter], insert a column at the cursor (~ic) and finally insert a row at the curson (~ir).
Has anybody gone down this row before? Happy to share thoughts.
As someone who does a lot of work in Excel, and created a number of macros myself that make using it for my needs easier, I’d certainly be interested in seeing more details on what you’ve come up with.
After decades of modeling, I find it much easier if I mouse with my
right hand and generally keep the mouse on the part of the sheet I am
working on. My left hand does the most frequently used tasks of
formatting, inserting, deleting, etc.
Enclosed is a picture of my macro set which makes use of the KM
automatic menu system that handles duplicate hot keys. Typing the ` key
brings up the menu, the next key selects the general category (eg
_C_olumn) and the third key specifies the operation (eg _A_utofit). A
few operations required modest renaming to prevent unwanted duplication
of first letters in the menus.
Three quick key presses in well ingrained patterns as I say the commands
to myself does the job so I never have to look at the KM menu on the screen.
If you are interested I can try to figure out how to send you the lot.
What have you come up with that you find especially useful?
Thanks for sharing, Bruce! Your system seems well thought-out and useful, and I would certainly like to see how your macros accomplish each of these actions. If you're not sure how to send/export your macros, you can do so fairly easily by selecting all the macros you want to export and going to File > Export Macros… (you can see more details and instructions here).
Most of my Office macros (primarily for Excel, but many are also designed to function identically in Word) are used just for formatting, and to make up for the lack of keyboard shortcuts for zooming that Microsoft inexplicably removed in Office 2016. I never much got into KM's palettes myself (though I probably should, since they seem very useful, especially with the new options available in KM8); instead, I mostly set my macros to different hotkeys using mnemonics associated with their function. You can download them and see what they do and how they do it (spoiler: they're 98% AppleScripts that I manage and run in KM for convenience) in the (very, very) long image below.
Macros posted to new topic, “Use Keyboard instead of Mouse for Excel
Commands”.
Thanks for your macros. I 'll defer looking at them until I get into
AppleScripts. I am still wrestling with learning to rudiments of this
amazing KM beast.
