Tech Tip of the Week

Creating keyboard shortcuts to open programs

You can create keyboard shortcuts that let you launch programs, which can often be simpler than opening programs using a mouse or other pointing device. The first step is to ensure that a shortcut to the program you want to launch is on the desktop. If there isn’t one create it by dragging the program’s icon from the start menu to the desktop. If there is no shortcut in the start menu, browse to the folder that contains the program, right-click the program file, and then click Create Shortcut to create one and drag this shortcut onto your desktop.

To assign a keyboard shortcut key to a program, right-click the shortcut on the desktop and click Properties. In the Shortcut Properties dialog box, select the Shortcut tab, and there the Shortcut key box. Press the key on your keyboard that you want to use in combination with CTRL+ALT (keyboard shortcuts automatically start with CTRL+ALT), and then click OK. You can also use CTRL+SHIFT combinations.

You can now use this keyboard shortcut to open the program when you’re using the desktop. The shortcut will also work while using other programs as long as they do not have a function associated with the shortcut key that you have chosen.