This very thing aggravated me to no end when I first got my tablet a
month or so ago.
There is a way to sort of create your own shortcuts but it isn't ideal
for too many tools at once because it relies on the tool button having
text next to it.
Directions:
1) On any toolbar, look for and click on the 'down' triangle at the far
right end of the toolbar.
2) Mouse over "Add or Remove Buttons" that has appeared.
3) Click "Customize"
or
1) right click any toolbar
2) choose 'Customize' from the bottom
This is how I get to the customize buttons/toolbars dialog. I feel
that this dialog can be pretty confusing. In time I hope to do an
entire writeup regarding customizing ON (with a heavy lean toward
pen/tablet users and voice users) but for now the Commands Tab is what
we want (and should be the first visible one after step 3 above).
The commands tab lets you drag a copy of one of the built-in buttons to
any toolbar or menu. If you ever thought File and Edit should be
combined, now you can. The important part to remember is that this new
button is a copy of the 'real' button that OneNote will always provide
and that you can always reset to. Don't be afraid to mess around,
basically.
4) With the Customize dialog still open on the Commands Tab, click the
button you wish you had a hotkey for. The only thing that will happen
is the 'Modify Selection' button on the customize dialog is now usable.
Click it. (Step 4 can also be done by just right-clicking the button
once Customize is up)
5) The third item in the list that appears is "Name". If an
ampersand(&) is placed in the name like so: "My &Button Name", the
button is hotkeyed to ALT+(whatever comes after the ampersand), so ALT-B
in this case. This is how ALT-F goes to File Menu (and how you can
change that). The problem is that unless the button text is visible,
the hotkey will not work. So...
6) Somewhere below that is the button style options which are: Default,
Text Only one, Text Only two, and Image and Text. You want to select
"Image and Text".
7) Once you Close the customize dialog, you can test your button out.
It should have the same tool picture but its name with one letter
underlined will appear next to it. Done and done.
Reminder) Remember, your customized button is but a copy of the
original. If you use the button on multiple toolbars then changing one
will not change the others. Fullscreen mode toolbars also seem to be
separate.
Bonus: Besides enabling a hotkey, choosing to show button text allows
another powerful tool to 'press' the button and that is speech
recognition. My initial testing using ON and Vista's SR (for
non-dictation usage) was promising. The command I stated would almost
always select the correct button but there were two problems: 1) most
tools didn't have text and 2) some text was redundant between toolbars
causing the speech tool to make multiple matches. If you've ever used
vista SR, you know it highlights the possible matches and you say "1",
or "2" or what-have-you to choose between the options. Now I can give
every button a unique name.
_Known_Problems_
- Overall, toolbars will have less room because now some use text
- toolbars on the left and right sides will have text sideways. You
can still read it and recognize it, but it's a pain and takes up room
- I had ON crash after/during my first long session of discovering
button customization. I'd changed a ton and edited the icons for a
couple buttons, put the computer to sleep, etc. before the crash so
its unlikely to happen again. My only loss was the custom toolbars
and buttons I had made. Exit often while customizeing I suppose, just
to be sure.
