Saturday, March 13, 2010

Changing Mac Shortcuts to Optimse with Windows on VM Fusion

I have a Mac and run VM Fusion Windows XP to allow me to use great windows programs like Excel and have two Dropbox accounts. However, as a Windows Excel user, you'll have different shortcuts than Mac Excel users, but when you toggle between screens, the keyboard functions don't change. (My friend Geoff write an incredible Excel Tips for Mac users website. It's amazing and as more people use Macs, he should have a lot more fans. However, that'll have to wait until Office 2011 as Office 2008 on Mac sucks like mosquitoes in Panama. For now I will use VM Fusion.)


I haven't solved all the nuances (such as having to hit fn + F4 for an absolute cell reference instead of just F4) but here's three big ones.

Windows:
Undo: Ctrl + z
Redo: Ctrl + y
Skip a word: Ctrl + Left or Right arrow

Mac:
Skip a word: alt + left or right arrow
Skip to end: cmd + left or right arrow
Undo: cmd + z
Redo: cmd + y

Problem:
If you use Ctrl + Left of Right on a VM Fusion Windows, and have spaces enabled due to screen toggling functionality, you can't use the shortcut to skip a word in windows.

If you go to System Preferences->Expose and Space->Change shortcut for switch between spaces. It gives you 3 options to use 1. Ctrl arrow 2. alt arrow or 3. cmd arrow. We can't assign any of those shortcuts because they are all assigned (see above). I like using them all. But I really want a way to switch quickly between windows without having to see the grid (below).


Solution:

Then I discovered a secret! Just click the drop down and then hold shift. Now you can assign switch between spaces via Ctrl + Shift + arrow. I don't think there's duplicate functionality of that shortcut on Windows so yeah! I'm happy.





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