Changing the Items on the Menu

Changing the Items on the Menu

You can customize all the Illustrator menu commands by using the Keyboard Shortcuts dialog box (refer to Figure 19-1). Go to this dialog box by choosing Edit→Keyboard Shortcuts.

You can redefine even the most common commands, such as Open and New, with different keyboard shortcuts. To add a new keyboard shortcut, follow these steps:

1. Choose Edit→Keyboard Shortcuts.

   The Keyboard Shortcuts dialog box opens.

2. Choose Menu Commands from the drop-down menu at the top left of the dialog box (the default name is Tools).

   A list of all Illustrator menus appears. Click the arrow beside the menu name to open the complete list of items under that menu. If the item already has a keyboard shortcut, you find it listed to the right of the menu item, in the Shortcut column.

3. Change the keyboard shortcuts by highlighting the current keyboard shortcut, typing a new shortcut, and pressing Enter.

You can also print out a big sheet of all the keyboard shortcuts, even if you haven’t changed any of them. To print out all the keyboard shortcuts, follow these steps:

1. Choose Edit→Keyboard Shortcuts.

   The Keyboard Shortcuts dialog box opens.

2. Click the Export Text button in the lower right of the Keyboard Shortcuts dialog box.

   A Save dialog box opens.

3. Name the text file that you want to contain your keyboard shortcuts, specify a location for it on your hard drive, and then click OK to save the text file.

4. Open any word processing program on your computer, choose File→ Open, open the text file you just created, and then print it as you would any word processing document.