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Some Excel users pop F1 off their keyboards (2012)

businessinsider.com

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Re: Some Excel users pop F1 off their keyboards (2012)

#51

Post by mannykannot »

slezyr wrote: post #14
jabot wrote: post #2

This should really be solved in software... However, I remember trying to map capslock to control on windows a few years back. It involved becoming an administrator and entering an opaque hexadecimal key into the registry. Simply popping off the key is probably easier. Oh, on linux it boils down to "setxkbmap -option ctrl:nocaps", which doesn't require root...

Or even better solution: programmable keyboards. It's sad that just few keyboards have opensource firmware and allow to remap keys. One of them Ergodox EZ ~$350 https://ergodox-ez.com/

In at least one finance company I know of, alternative keyboards are not permitted without getting security's permission. They might not do a very thorough examination, but I can imagine they might disallow a programmable keyboard on the basis of it being too complex to analyze the risks.

Re: Some Excel users pop F1 off their keyboards (2012)

#52

Post by sp332 »

superasn wrote: post #18

Windows help and Windows troubeshooter are among the two most useless things in the OS (and lately it's Cortana). It far easier and more relevant to just do a Google search than waste time with these things. Same goes for answers.microsoft.com, whenever i see that link on top og Google results I'm pretty sure I'll just waste 10 minutes of my life and then search for the same thing on Stackexchange and pray to god som…

Office has a zillion features buried in various menus and panels. The help feature has been pretty reliable when I need to find something that I know is in there.

Re: Some Excel users pop F1 off their keyboards (2012)

#53

Post by zokier »

When I was younger and played games, popping out the windows key was typical. At best triggering windows menu meant lost round, but more typically a crashed game or even crashed Windows.

Even today I'm wary of task switching from a game, as it still doesn't seem to be entirely robust

Re: Some Excel users pop F1 off their keyboards (2012)

#54

Post by yread »

jabot wrote: post #2

This should really be solved in software... However, I remember trying to map capslock to control on windows a few years back. It involved becoming an administrator and entering an opaque hexadecimal key into the registry. Simply popping off the key is probably easier. Oh, on linux it boils down to "setxkbmap -option ctrl:nocaps", which doesn't require root...

You could setup an AutoHotkey to "silence" it

https://superuser.com/questions/291018/consume-keystroke-in-...

Re: Some Excel users pop F1 off their keyboards (2012)

#58

Post by infogulch »

if_by_whisky wrote: post #41
grecy wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ahhh, can't you just map it to something else? (nothing?)

Excel users don't think that way, I guess. Remapping keys requires a registry update on Windows, which many of my windows-at-work friends don't get access to. Even if they did, they might not trust themselves to make registry updates. Popping the key off is easy, secure, and effective.

A 2-line autohotkey script would be enough to disable the F1 key in just Excel. You can even compile it down to a single copyable binary.

Re: Some Excel users pop F1 off their keyboards (2012)

#59

Post by wazoox »

jerrre wrote: post #8
dingo_bat wrote: post #3

At least this is one problem new MacBook users won't have!

for me it's ⌘+W vs ⌘+Q in Firefox: the first closes the current tab, the second the whole browser which takes some time to restart. Solved it now with an add-on

There's a preference that asks for confirmation if there's more than one open tab.

Re: Some Excel users pop F1 off their keyboards (2012)

#60

Post by jasonkester »

Back in my Engineer days, where I'd spend much of my time writing technical reports, I'd always remove the Insert key from my keyboard.

It's sitting there in that block of six keys that you use all the time when editing text (home, end, page up/down, delete), and it's a little timebomb. You would invariably hit it by accident at some point and change your editor into "overwrite all my stuff" mode.

It would usually take a minute or two of ruining your document before you realized what was happening and spent the next several minutes repairing the damage.

I would go years at a time without ever hitting that key on purpose, so I just kept it in a drawer, in case it ever needed using.

Now, as a developer, there's an Insert in tons of useful keyboard combos, so it needs to stay there. And laptops have ruined that old useful six-key block so it's a lot rarer to hit it by accident.

But it had no business being there. Fifteen years later, I'm still not a friend of that key.

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