Binding Spell Checker Options to Shortcut Keys

The spell checker package does not assign shortcut keys to the options on the Tools | Spell Checker submenu. This avoids conflicts with built-in Visual Studio commands and other packages. However, you can assign the shortcut keys of your choice to them if you want as follows:

  1. Select the Tools menu, then Options.

  2. In the dialog box that appears, select the Environment category and then the Keyboard subcategory.

  3. In the "Show commands containing" textbox, type in "Spell" without the quotation marks. This will limit the command list to the spell checker commands.

  4. Select one of the commands to which you would like to bind a shortcut key. The commands starting with "Tools." correspond to the menu items. The others are for the Solution Explorer context menus and you won't typically bind them to shortcut keys.

  5. If assigning shortcut keys to the Move to Next/Prior Spelling Issue commands, it is recommended that you change the "Use new shortcut in" combo box to "Text Editor" so that the shortcuts are limited in scope to text editor windows. The others can be assigned in the Global category.

  6. To assign a shortcut key combination, select the "Press shortcut keys" text box and press the shortcut keys to use. To help avoid conflicts with existing command shortcuts, it is recommended that you use a combination of the Ctrl, Alt, and/or Shift keys along with the selected shortcut key to find an unused one or one that doesn't conflict with something else in the selected scope. If the key combination you select has one or more conflicts, they will be shown in the "Shortcut currently used by" combo box. If you've limited the scope of the shortcut key such as to the text editor, you can typically ignore any conflicts unless they are also in the text editor. If you left the scope set to Global, you may want to choose a different key combination.

    As an example, you can assign Ctrl+Alt+Right Arrow and Ctrl+Alt+Left Arrow to the Move to Next and Move to Prior Spelling Issue commands with the scope limited to the text editor. Depending on the keyboard mapping scheme you have selected, you may see that these conflict with the key assignments to the Column to the Right/Left commands in the HTML Editor Design View. However, since this is a visual designer and not a text editor, it won't cause any problems.

To remove a previously assigned shortcut key, follow the above steps and, once the command is selected, click the Remove button to remove the assigned shortcut key.

See Also