Original publication date: August, 2002

Take Advantage of Keyboard Shortcuts in your Trading Partner Kit

If you create EDI documents in Softshare Vista or Softshare Athena, you’re familiar with Softshare’s trading partner kit (TPK) system. TPKs are the trading partner-specific forms you fill out each time you create an EDI document.

Mouse navigation through the TPK forms is very intuitive, but for those of you who like to keep your fingers on the keyboard, we’re highlighting some simple keyboard shortcuts that can be used in place of mouse-clicking.

• Press the Tab key to enable the cursor on a newly opened form. When you first open a TPK form, the cursor is not available, but after pressing the Tab key once or twice (depending on the kit), the cursor will appear in the first default field.
• You can also use the Tab key to move your cursor from one field to the next. Pressing the Shift + Tab moves your cursor from field to field in the opposite direction.
• At a drop-down menu, you can avoid scrolling through the drop-down selections by typing in the first letter of the selection you’d like displayed. If there are several selections beginning with the same letter, the first one is displayed. You can use the down arrow key to move to the next alphabetically ordered selection. For example, if you wanted to select the state of Colorado from a drop-down menu of state abbreviations, you’d type in “c” to display “CA” and then press the down arrow key once to move from “CA” to “CO.”
• There are several keyboard shortcuts that allow you to quickly move up or down a TPK form. The Home and End keys take you to the very top or very bottom of a form. The Page Up and Page Down keys scroll through the form one page at a time. In some TPK forms, depending on the kit, the up arrow and down arrow keys can be used to scroll through the form approximately 1/7 of a page at a time.

© 2007 Softshare, Inc. All rights reserved. This article is part of an archive of Softshare newsletter articles dating back several years. Some of the screenshots, procedures, or information contained within this article may no longer be 100% accurate or relevant, as Softshare's software and services are very fluid. Thank you for your understanding.