MapInfo Pro

In MapInfo Pro you can find a number of keyboard shortcuts or command shortcuts to access specific commands.

For example Ctrl+O will show the Open dialog for you to pick a table, workspace or Excel file to open into MapInfo Pro.

Recently, I just learned two new ones that really will make my day easier:

• Ctrl+W: Unselect. I often need to unselect features that I either have selected by accident or intenionally and having a shortcut for this is just a lot easier to searching for the red unselect command in the interface.
• Alt+Left Arrow: Zoom Previous. Zooming to the previous view with a shortcut commend is also easier and often used by me

 

In the Tooltips for the controls you can see the shortcut assigned to the controls:

See Attachment 

But there are a lot of other keyboard shortcuts in MapInfo Pro. Which is your favorite(s) and why?

PS: Did you know you can create your own keyboard shortcuts with the Command Editor/Keyboard Shortcuts tool in the 64 bit version of MapInfo Pro? If not, have a look at this article: Editing key strokes for certain MapInfo Pro functions

My favourite is the S key which enables SNAP. I need to use it a lot! The automatically picks up the nodes of a map object and snaps to them! ?

My most used ones would be "s" for snap and "t" for trace.

I didn't know about the deselect one! I usually just use the button.

Our trainee has been setting up some new buttons too, single click with mouse and you can zoom to a particular map location. I have one I downloaded that gives you instant totals or whatever you have selected.

Oh year, Snap and Trace.

Personally, I prefer to use the Shift and Ctrl keys in combination with Snap to determine what way to trace.

"Setting up some new buttons"? Via a MapBasic application or via the Modify Ribbon option in MapInfo Pro?

mbx files, the show totals one is an actual menu button and the zoom to location set up is a drop down menu

 

I love the Alt+Left Arrow shortcut.

I also use Ctrl+Shift+F a lot, to find a selected item in a browser/map.

Can we keep a shortcut in MapInfo for call out / pop-up's of attributes when we click on a feature? and also the capabilities of choosing which columns to be displayed?

Hi Krishna,

Unfortunately, you can only control what columns to display for the Browser window. You can't control the columns in the Info window. The best suggestion I can come up with is to have the most important columns first in your table. In that way they will also be at the top of the Info window.

You can find two tools on the Community Download page that can display the attributes of a selected feature in the Info window. These tools are "WindowHelper 3.0 x64" and "InfoSelHandler 3.0 x64". Both these tools are for the 64 bit version of MapInfo Pro. You can find the Community Download page here: http://communitydownloads.pbinsight.com/

Esther - Ctrl+A will find your selection in all open windows

 

Not really a mapinfo shortcut but I mapped the following code to ctrl+t

https://pastebin.com/kr7BFQzr

The script opens up a topographic index layer I created, and then opens the respective (Ordinance Survey) topographic tile to where my mouse is hovering over... I use it all the time, as it's quite usual we need the topographic layer up

I dont like Ctrl. Thanks to Keyboard_Shortcuts application I just need to press a single key, i.e. "z" for zoom. Unfortunately I couldnt use this application as simply in the 64-bit MI as in 32-bit. I had to press Ctrl+key.

+1 for the S key, also find F4 for new Browser a timesaver! (F4 in 64 bit / F2 in 32 bit)

I assume you refer to the Command Editor, @Labied Abdul-Aziz?

Right, Ashley, I use F4 a lot

It is a MapBasic application I have found här:

http://communitydownloads.pbinsight.com/code-exchange/download/shortcut-keys/#

But it no longer works in 64-bit?

@Labied Abdul-Aziz

FYI there is a tool native to 64 bit MapBasic application written by Pitney bowes which allows you to customise keyboard shortcuts yourself which would give you all the keyboard shortcuts you desire :)

I think @Labied Abdul-Aziz?  refers to the fact that the Command Editor tool doesn't support single character shortcuts at the moment. They need to also include Ctrl, Shift or Alt

Right @Peter Horsbøll Møller? , that was what I meant.?

This sounds a bit simple, but I kinda rely on F8 for change text style.

I use MIP v15.0 and I've found that if you want to display a 'Browse Table' window as part of a layout and want to change the size or font of the text, then using this F8 shortcut is the only way to get these changes to the style saved as part of the workspace.

If you use the Text Style tool that's part of the browser window, then the changes are forgotten when you reload the workspace.

Hope that's useful to someone!

Hmm, that's weird, Rich. I would think if you alter the browser text style of an embedded browser via the rightclick context menu of the active embedded browser that should stick, too. Iøll give it a go and let you know. If it doesn't work, it sounds like a bug

Ah, there is now context menu options for changing the Browser Text Font in 15.0, but if you use Text Style from the Browse menu it also works. This is also the menu item that F8 has been assigned to.

Nice shotcut, I'll try to remember that one

Ctrl + A, finds the current selection in all windows. I use this every day and is probably by far the most useful shortcut to me. When writing MapBasic code I also use Ctrl + K, Ctrl + L and Ctrl + U a lot to compile a module, link a project, and run a compiled application respectively. These three shortcuts save me a huge amount of time when I'm trying to debug my often error strewn code!

Thanks @Tom Bacon?! Someone showed me Ctrl A ages ago and I forgot all about it. I'll use that a lot.

Just to let you know, in the 64 bit versions we have adopted more of the common Windwos shortcuts.

So F2 to bring up the New Browser window is now F4 because F2 is now used to rename windows, layers and maps.

Ctrl+A is now used to Select All similar to how it works in Windows. In my v16.0 I have Ctrl+Shift+F to find Selection but I might have used the Command Editor tool to add that myself - I can't remember.

Ctrl+O will show the Open dialog for you to pick a table, workspace or Excel file to open into MapInfo Pro.

Oh yes, @Rajashekar TR?, I use that shortcut way to seldom. I really should use it more often than accessing the control with my mouse

The keyboard shortcuts that I use the most are for zooming and panning the map (+/- and arrows) and F4 for new Browser window. One that came in very handy when I learned it was Ctrl+E for adding a row to the table in the browser window.

Thanks for sharing, Håkan. Great suggestions!

Its not my favourite as its a bit of a stretch for the left-hand but Shift + Ctrl + N I use a lot in combination with Ctrl + R. When editing networks ?Ctrl + R activates the 'reshape' function on the selected feature and Shift + Ctrl + N lets me start dropping in new nodes.

 

Shift + Ctrl + F gets a fair work out to. Use it to find re-centre map on selected item or bring selection to top of list in browser.

S for Snap !!

@Labied Abdul-Aziz?, I hope you have seen that MapInfo Pro 17.0.1 is bringing a lot of single key shortcuts to the game.

For example z for "Zoom In" and Z for "Zoom Out".

Note that we seem to have an issue with these Single Key shortcuts if you have activated Caps Lock.

@John Ievers - as Peter mentions above, we introduced the larger set of single key shortcuts with the release of 17.0.1 last week, and these are case sensitive.

So S is now actually for Select tool, while s is for snap.

@Peter Horsbøll Møller? ?It sounds interesting.. unfortunately I dont have the release of 17.0.1. Actually I didnt leave 15.02 because of the benifit of single key shortcuts :-)

Now I've to test 17 and think about changing.

 

 

Thanks @Hakan Karlsson?  but sentences begin with a capital letter...

@Peter Horsbøll Møller? we already have + and - keys for zooming in and out? And arrow keys for up, down, left and right.

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+ and - "just" zoom around the map center. Z and z selects the Zoom In or Zoom Out tools so that you can zoom "more precisely".

But + and - are quite good shortcuts too.

Esc - takes you back to the Select tool

Good one, @Emma Daniel! And with v17.0.1 we have made the Esc key work better. It no longer switches to the Select tool if you hit it while drawing a polyline/polygon or if you hit it to stop the map rendering