Keyboard Shortcuts to Navigate to Task Pane Options

[AspiringGeek]

Greetings, I've learned I can toggle the Task Pane using Ctrl+F1, then use
Ctrl+Space to activate the dropdown list.

I think it'd be GREAT if I could do this with one combo, e.g., Ctrl+F1 to
toggle the Task Pane AND activate the dropdown (hitting ESC or clicking in
the active pane would de-activate the dropdown.

Also, I'm surprised to learn that I can't navigate the drop-down by typing
the initial letters of the items in the list!

Or am I missing something?

 

[Alex]

Each task pane in that dropdown should have a hotkey, which is the way Office
chose to implement this rather than the way you suggested.

As far as the kbd shortcut, to be completely honest this isn't the most
commonly accessed piece of UI or functionality in the app, and nice short kbd
shortcuts are actually pretty valuable commodities. So less common actions
like this one unfortunately require multiple shortcut sequences, so that nice
juicy commands like Print and Apply Note Flag 1 (Ctrl-1), or even Show Page
List (Ctrl-Shift-S) can always get them, now and in the future. We also
can't use every shortcut up in the first version, because hopefully we'll
have many more versions and many new commands we want to make work with kbd
shortcuts, and we don't want to change them every version or people like you
would hate us. Sorry if this is a long answer to a simple question, I
just thought it would be a good opportunity to give you an insite into our
decision making process.

-Alex <MS>

 

[AspiringGeek]

OK, understood. Frankly, for most Office apps I hardly ever use the Task
Pane; however, I used it several times each day within OneNote.

I completely understand & am sympathetic to the need to conserve key
sequences. Indeed, in general I'm thrilled with the rich array of hot keys
which came with this v.1 product!

Alex, there is no hot key sequence which I can find to access either the
items in the Task Pane drop down or the items in the pane itself. I can use
the tab and arrow keys to, but no hot keys.

Thanks for your responses to my other two posts. I will experiment with my
tab-related issues and get back to you. I appreciate your help.