Ken Puls, the Excel Guru, sent me some nice AHK stuff and I’m trying to put a post together to share it with you. But it’s not happening so far. In the mean time, I didn’t want you to have to wait for these gems that I’ve been enjoying.

Definition and Last Position in the VBE

If you right click on a procedure call in the VBE and choose Definition, it takes you to that procedure. If you then right click and choose Last Position, it takes you back. If you’re like me, the thought of right clicking is abhorrent to you. Instead, I use the context menu key, but alas there’s a problem. It takes a few microseconds for that menu to show up. So while I press menu+D, all I’m really doing is inserting the letter ‘d’ in my procedure call.

As any good keyboard hound knows, you can use Shift+F2 and Ctrl+Shift+F2 to accomplish the task without the context menu delay. That’s great except that my sausage fingers don’t bend that way. Shift+F2 isn’t bad, but Ctrl+Shift+F2 is too much work for something I use as much as this. Without further ado

^d::
Send +{F2}
Return
^l::
Send ^+{F2}
Return

Now Ctrl+D gives me the definition and Ctrl+L takes me back. Sometimes hotkeys take a little getting used to. It’s easy to forget they’re there. This one, however, took about five seconds to become a natural part of my VBE workflow.

Switching tabs in Access

There’s so much about Access that isn’t keyboard friendly that it sickens me. But the worst is switching tabs. Ctrl+F6 cycles forward through the tabs and Ctrl+Shift+F6 cycles backward. Never you mind that Ctrl+Tab does that job in every other Windows program every released. Ever.

#IfWinActive ahk_class OMain
^Tab::
Send ^{F6}
Return
^+Tab::
Send ^+{F6}
Return

AHK’d!

Changing Field Size in Access

Speaking of crappy Access keyboarding, how about changing the field properties as you create a table? Sucks, huh? Here’s the scenario: I’m entering a field and changing the Data Type to Number. If I want a Long Integer, I’m good because that’s the default. If I want a Double, however, I have to press F6 to get to the Field Properties and change the field size to Double. Then, instead of Shift+F6 to back, I have to F6 five times to cycle through all of the windows/panes/screen areas. That’s just stupid. So

+F6::
Send {F6 5}
Return

That works for me because I don’t vary my Access window. If you hide your Navigation pane, or have some other configuration than me, you might have to change that 5 to something else.

Windows APIs

Ken has a nifty API generator that I’ll be posting about later. While mine is a little more pedestrian, I think it offers some advantages. I have a separate hotstring for every API that I care about. Here’s one

::declaregetopenfilename::
SendInput !to!i{Enter}
(
+3If VBA7 Then
Public Declare PtrSafe Function GetOpenFileName Lib "comdlg32.dll" Alias _
"GetOpenFileNameA" (pOpenfilename As OPENFILENAME) As Long

Public Type OPENFILENAME
lStructSize As Long
hwndOwner As Long
hInstance As Long
lpstrFilter As String
lpstrCustomFilter As String
nMaxCustFilter As Long
nFilterIndex As Long
lpstrFile As String
nMaxFile As Long
lpstrFileTitle As String
nMaxFileTitle As Long
lpstrInitialDir As String
lpstrTitle As String
flags As Long
nFileOffset As Integer
nFileExtension As Integer
lpstrDefExt As String
lCustData As Long
lpfnHook As Long
lpTemplateName As String
End Type
+3End If
)
SendInput !to!i{Enter}

That’s a big one. I type declaregetopenfilename in a module and this little honey appears. One of the advantages of this method, verbose though it is, is that the API is mostly intact in the AHK file. That makes it really easy to edit if the need were to arise. Making a new API hotstring is as easy as setting up declareapiname, pasting Jan Karel’s code, and changing a few things.

The first thing you have to change is the # signs have to be change to +3 or they won’t come across. The other thing is a little more subtle. Did you notice that I send Alt+TO, Alt+I, Enter before and after the API stuff? That turns off, then back on, the Auto Indent feature in the VBE. AHK sees all these tabs in my string and it dutifully returns them. That means that every line is indented one too many times from the line above it. Cumulatively. By the time you get to the last line, there’s 30 tabs in there.

By turning Auto Indent off and back on, I can keep my API looking clean in the AHK file, which I like.