In earlier releases of Acrobat, it was easy to get your zoom tool active – either click on the zoom tool with your mouse, or tap the Z key. Want to try out your new link? Activate your Hand tool to test it. Either click on the hand tool with your mouse, or tap the letter H. Voila – hand tool activated. I used these "speed keys" all the time, and have taught them to all my classes. "Tap the letter H" was heard many times per class back in the day.
Something happened when Adobe released (I believe it was) Acrobat version 6. The cool speed key trick no longer worked. I remember thinking, "Oh no! I not only teach this trick constantly, but I use it perpetually as well."
I was certain Adobe wouldn't remove such a productivity-boosting feature like this. I went digging through the Preferences. I never did find the phrase 'speed keys,' but I did find a rather lofty and verbose option labeled Use Single-Key Accelerators To Access Tools under the General heading, and it was turned off by default.
After consulting with two dictionaries and several PHD scholars, I determined that turning this feature on would allow me to use those 'speed keys' once again. It worked in Acrobat 6, and has worked in every version since!
To use "Single key accelerators," you simply tap a single key.
Z=Marquee Zoom Tool
C=Crop Tool
A=Article Tool
There are many more. You can press F1 on your keyboard in Acrobat to bring up the Help system and search for keyboard shortcuts for the complete list of available commands.
Oh, there's a catch–these 'Single key accelerators' ONLY work when your view panel is active. If you have just clicked on a bookmark, you've activated the Navigation panel so you'd need to click on the right-side of your screen (View panel) for the speed keys to work.
What other productivity-energizing features does Acrobat sport? Sign up for my Acrobat classes and find out!
Do these only work in Acrobat or will they work in other TCS2 tools as well?
Do these only work in Acrobat or will they work in other TCS2 tools as well?
Do these only work in Acrobat or will they work in other TCS2 tools as well?
In other Adobe applications, you don’t need to enable this feature. They just work. If you hover over the Pen Tool in Photoshop, you’ll see a tool tip indicating the letter P is it’s speed key. Tap P and you’ve got the pen tool. For whatever reason, these handy shortcuts come out the box DISABLED in Acrobat.
In other Adobe applications, you don’t need to enable this feature. They just work. If you hover over the Pen Tool in Photoshop, you’ll see a tool tip indicating the letter P is it’s speed key. Tap P and you’ve got the pen tool. For whatever reason, these handy shortcuts come out the box DISABLED in Acrobat.
In other Adobe applications, you don’t need to enable this feature. They just work. If you hover over the Pen Tool in Photoshop, you’ll see a tool tip indicating the letter P is it’s speed key. Tap P and you’ve got the pen tool. For whatever reason, these handy shortcuts come out the box DISABLED in Acrobat.