If you are a big fan of keyboard shortcuts, Sitecore offers you a way you can speed up your experience using a combination of keys and trigger some commands. Here, I will give you the recommended ones and other useful hot keys that will make your life easier.

Useful Keyboard Shortcuts

The ones I recommend:

F9: Publish Site
F2: Rename the selected item
CTRL+SHFT+HOME: Select to home item.
CTRL+S: Save the selected item.
CTRL+D: Duplicate the selected item.
CTRL+SHFT+ALT+R: Toggle raw values.
CTRL+SHFT+ALT+T: Toggle standard fields.
CTRL+SHFT+ALT+UP: Sort the selected item before the previous item.
CTRL+SHFT+ALT+DOWN: Sort the selected item after the next item.
CTRL+DRAG: Copy an item.

Content Editor

These are the following shortcuts you can use to activate a specific tab in the Content Editor:

ALT+H: Home
ALT+N: Navigate
ALT+R: Review
ALT+P: Publish
ALT+V: Versions
ALT+C: Configure
ALT+E: Presentation
ALT+S: Security
ALT+I: View

In Addition, Sitecore lets you create your own shortcuts. First, we need to know the key code of our custom combination and luckily we have a tool for it. You will need to go to “Keyboard Map” as shown in the image below:

It will open a dialog where you will press the combination of keys you want for the custom shortcut. In this case, I’ve pressed CTRL + SHIFT + P and I would like to make it open the item’s presentation details.

There are two ways to trigger our command, but first, we need to change the database to core:

1. Ribbon buttons

Find the desired action in one of the buttons located at /sitecore/content/Applications/Content Editor/Ribbons/. In this case, we need to find the Details button that opens the presentation details dialog (/Chunks/Layout/Details).

Locate the “Key Code” field and paste the custom code you created.

Save your changes and try using the shortcut with any item and you will see the layout details dialog.

2. Custom Key Map Item

If you don’t want to use any command that is on the ribbon, then you can create your custom key map item. First, you will need to locate a command handled by Sitecore from the /App_Config/commands.config file. In our case, we will look for “item:setlayoutdetails” command which is the one that opens up the presentation details of an item.

Navigate to /sitecore/system/Settings/Key Map and create a new item “Key Map” item. We will call it Open Layout Details and fill the KeyCode and Click fields with the corresponding values. Take a look at the image below:

Test it and you will see it working.

Make sure that your shortcut is unique and it’s not in use if not, it won’t work.

You can also check out this cool Chrome extension that will let you add custom shortcuts and speed up your Sitecore experience: “Sitecore keyboard shortcuts”

 

This article was based on the blog post by John West.