How do you assign shortcut keys in Final Draft?

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  • How do you assign shortcut keys in Final Draft?

    One of the most annoying things about Final Draft is that when I want to change an element (from say "action line" to "character"), I have to annoyingly scroll up, drop down a menu, select what I want to change it to, move on to the next element, repeat.

    Now inside Final Draft's formatting menu is something that they *say* does this. (cntrl+1, cntrl+2, etc.) But all that does is create a brand new element of that type. It doesn't change the existing one.

    So how do I use a shortcut key to change an existing element to a different one?
    Script Reviews - 5 a week! http://scriptshadow.blogspot.com/

  • #2
    Re: How do you assign shortcut keys in Final Draft?

    Are you on a system 10 mac or are you in windows?

    FD6?

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    • #3
      Re: How do you assign shortcut keys in Final Draft?

      Final Draft 7. Windows.
      Script Reviews - 5 a week! http://scriptshadow.blogspot.com/

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      • #4
        Re: How do you assign shortcut keys in Final Draft?

        Wilson,

        I am pretty sure there are no shortcuts to do what you have in mind. I have looked in the Help before, and I looked again just now.

        Here is something that you can do, though. You can add some buttons on your toolbar (or on a new toolbar) to let you do this. That is easier than the drop-down menu. I did it just now, and it works.

        Take the following steps:

        Tools | Customize | Buttons | Format

        Now drag your S A C P D T buttons onto your toolbar. If you don't have room, you can create a new toolbar.

        When I dragged the buttons, each one of them seemed to create a subgroup on the toolbar. You will need to play around with the buttons until you get them all in the same group. You will see what I mean. They have a little divider between each one until you finally figure out how to make them all go into the same group. If you mess up, just hit Cancel and start all over. It took me a few tries.

        If you end up with some extra subgroups that are blank, drag them off the toolbar and then hit the X to close them.

        "The fact that you have seen professionals write poorly is no reason for you to imitate them." - ComicBent.

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        • #5
          Re: How do you assign shortcut keys in Final Draft?

          Comic, thank you. That does sound much easier.

          Let me just go on a mini-rant here for a second though. This is one of the reasons I resisted Final Draft for so long. When a big part of using this software is importing entire scripts into it, and sometimes as many as 50-100 elements have been tagged incorrectly, the fact that I have to manually go through each of these with a drop down menu (or in this case - thanks to you Comic - even a button) is ridiculous. Creating a keyboard shortcut for a style has been a part of Word for like 10 years.
          Script Reviews - 5 a week! http://scriptshadow.blogspot.com/

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          • #6
            Re: How do you assign shortcut keys in Final Draft?

            I hit the return key to get the pop-up and then the first letter of the element. So at the end of an action line, if the next line should be a character, it's return (for the end of the paragraph), return (to get the pop-up), C (for character), return (to start the character element). Really fast.

            I'm on an ancient version on an ancient PC, it might not work that way on more newfangled versions. I don't think my element menu even scrolls. (not at home, so I can't check)

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            • #7
              Re: How do you assign shortcut keys in Final Draft?

              I understand Wilson's frustration about this. In my Word template, I can use my right hand to navigate and click the paragraphs, and my left hand to use ALT+Key to change the paragraph type.

              A couple of comments.

              FinalDraft 7 imports very well now, compared to its success in the past. I think the most common mistake that it still makes is that it likes to import SHOTS as CHARACTER names.

              I did not know about the buttons until Wilson raised this whole question. Like him, I had looked in vain for shortcut keys that change the element type. I think the buttons will work very efficiently, though it would be nice to have keystrokes available, too.

              "The fact that you have seen professionals write poorly is no reason for you to imitate them." - ComicBent.

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              • #8
                Re: How do you assign shortcut keys in Final Draft?

                Originally posted by wilsoneads View Post
                Let me just go on a mini-rant here for a second though. This is one of the reasons I resisted Final Draft for so long. When a big part of using this software is importing entire scripts into it, and sometimes as many as 50-100 elements have been tagged incorrectly, the fact that I have to manually go through each of these with a drop down menu (or in this case - thanks to you Comic - even a button) is ridiculous. Creating a keyboard shortcut for a style has been a part of Word for like 10 years.

                Wilson, you're not alone. Alas everything has some sort of quirk. Reformatting MS Word docs on different machines and OSes is a nightmare.

                That said, Final Draft has the least possible excuse for these types of things.

                How dumb does screenwriting software have to be to import a slug line as dialogue? It should do a better job of separating elements and making them easier to select and reformat without disrupting the next element on the page.

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