After looking at some not-to-be-missed shortcuts in Trados Studio for beginners a couple of weeks ago, I’d like to mention a few that aren’t absolutely essential. However, if you’ve been using Studio for some time, check out the list below to see if any are new for you. Make an effort to use them every time and you’ll soon wonder how you’ve lived without them until now!

Here’s a set of five shortcuts for intermediate users:

1. Alt+F2 – Edit source segment (if the original file is a Word or PPT file and the option has been enabled in project settings).
2. Shift+Enter – Add a soft line break within a segment.
3. Alt+F7 – Add a new entry to your autotext list. Select the word(s) you want to add in the target segment, click Alt+F7>Add>OK. The next time you use the new entry, it’ll be offered in a dropdown list as soon as you’ve typed a few characters.
4. F6 – Clicking F6 will toggle between source and target segments. It takes the cursor to the start of the segment, which is useful in itself.
5. Ctrl+Shift+D – Use this to delete from the cursor position to the next tag. Another variant is Ctrl+D, which deletes from the cursor to the end of the segment, leaving ghost tags where needed.

And here’s another five for advanced users:

1. Ctrl+Shift+L – This displays any terms from the active segment that are in your termbase in a drop-down list. To enter the term, select it with the arrow keys and press Enter.
2. Ctrl+Shift+N – Add a new comment. Select the term(s) you want to comment on and click Ctrl+Shift+N. If you don’t select any words, the comment will be attached to the whole segment.
3. Ctrl+Alt+Shift F9 – When you’ve got tracked changes on, this shortcut will toggle between Final Mode On/Off to show or hide the original text. This is the equivalent in MS Word of toggling between “Final: Show Markup”/”Final” in the Review tab.
4. Ctrl+period – When tags are paired, the closing tag looks like a ghost if the first one is added individually. To bring it back to life (and make sure your translated file saves OK), position the cursor before or after the ghost tag and click Ctrl+period. If you’ve got several ghost tags in the segment, use this shortcut with care.
5. Ctrl+Alt+space – This clears all the tags in the target segment. Sometimes it’s easier to get rid of all the tags, and put them back in, one by one.

Customising shortcuts

You can customise all these shortcuts by going to Tools>Options>Keyboard Shortcuts [Studio 2014: File tab>Options>Keyboard Shortcuts]. Some functions don’t have a shortcut at all by default but you can easily assign one by following the same path. For example, I’ve assigned Ctrl+Alt+C to “Edit comment” because I work with comments a lot and that speeds up my work.

Shortcut clashes

It might be worth mentioning that you can sometimes get clashes with shortcuts used in other software running on your machine. If you try to assign a shortcut that’s already in use, Studio will warn you by highlighting it in red, but that of course only applies to shortcuts within Studio. Dictionaries such as Babylon and Oxford dictionaries have been known to interfere with shortcut behaviour in Studio in the past, and the solution is to reassign the problem shortcut. Caps Lock also used to sometimes bring up “Create Return Package”, which could be solved by assigning a different shortcut to that function.

Full list of shortcuts

For a complete list of shortcuts, plus functions that don’t yet have a shortcut assigned, check out Mat Linders’ Studio Manual.

Studio 2014

With Studio 2014 just round the corner, I’ll revisit this post when it’s released and make any updates as needed.* Stay posted!

*Edited to add: click through to my post on Studio 2014: shortcuts and the ribbon

Image attribution: Pazit