## Using the keyboard

You can do most navigation using the keyboard; click on link for a full chart of default keyboard shortcuts. You can see the keyboard shortcuts in the popup menu of the node. Some of the shortcuts which you do not see that way follow.

Page Up and Page Down

- scroll by a large skip up and down

Ctrl+Page Up and Ctrl+Page Down

- scroll by a large skip left and up

Nice for having a quick glance above and then continuing below again

Escape

- Move to root

Arrows

- Move around

You can select a range of nodes by holding shift and moving around with the cursor arrows or Page Up and Page Down.

You can replace the text in the current node and start editing by typing letters. You can also edit a node by pressing the home or end key, as well as F2.

Technical users can change the keyboard settings in user.properties.

#### Keyboard while editing a long node

By default, Enter finishes editing a long node, and Ctrl+Enter enters a new line. By unchecking the check box "Enter confirms" you can reverse those function, i.e., Enter enters a new line and Ctrl+Enter finishes editing. You can set the default value of that check box in user.properties. Moreover, the value of the box is saved during a session of FreeMind.

#### Changes in user interface of recent version

Some key settings have been redefined to conform with shared standards or intuitive use. Some of the new key settings are modeled on Microsoft tools.

New key settings include Enter for creating siblings below the node, Insert for creating new children, F2 for editing nodes -- here the Microsoft influence is apparent while there is no intuitive reason to have F2 for node editing. But once you get used to it in all the applications you use, you want to have that one in FreeMind too, of course.

The changes are customizable in user.properties to an extent. If you are a technical user and you do not like the changes, change the settings in user.properties.

To copy your selection to the clipboard when you are editing a node, press the right mouse button and choose copy.