I came upon some Windows users querying how to move to the end of a document or the beginning of a document using a keyboard shortcut. They work on Desktop machines or with external keyboards.
I couldn’t find an answer in the Help > List of All Shortcuts document.
On a laptop it’s easy, Ctrl+Fn+End or Ctrl+Fn+Home, alternatively an easier way is Ctrl+Fn+Right Arrow or Ctrl_Fn+Left Arrow. It works whether in single document mode or Scrivenings mode.
They don’t have the Fn key on their keyboards.
Do they need to record a customised key combination in the File > Options > Keyboard menu?
The cheatsheet in the Help menu is what you get by exporting from the Keyboard options tab, it’s just a list of menu command shortcuts, by and large. It will not go into native text editing shortcuts, how ↑ moves to the previous item in a list view, and so forth.
I’ve documented all of the basic text editing shortcuts I am aware of, in §15.2.1, Caret Movement and Selection, Table 15.1.
But it’s the standard shortcut that has always been used (save for Macs, which have always been weird about this): Ctrl+Home and Ctrl+End. I suspect you need an additional key because maybe your laptop does not have a physical Home or End key?
I don’t know how, that must be something special to the laptop that manipulates the scroll view by itself rather than the more traditional route of moving the cursor. It has always been a limitation that Home and End get trapped inside Scrivenings chunks. If you know of something different, that is standard and not specific to your hardware, let me know and I can add it to this table. In my research though the shortcuts I most often encountered for this are application specific rather than broad standards or conventions, like Ctrl+Alt+PgUp in Word.
Since I have a Windows laptop (Dell) with an Fn (function) key, my experience is as follows:
In Word: Ctrl+Fn+Home and Ctrl+Fn+End or Ctrl+Fn+Left and Ctrl+Fn+Right take me either to the beginning or the end of a document, which for a manuscript is the whole document. The combination you mentioned gives me erratic results.
In Scrivener: Ctrl+Fn+Home and Ctrl+Fn+End or Ctrl+Fn+Left and Ctrl+Fn+Right takes me to the end or beginning of a document, whether in single document mode or Scrivenings mode. (Basically, the same functionality as in Word, but different focus since a document is only part of the whole in Scrivener.)
In Scrivener again, if I lock the Fn key (using the Fn+Esc combination) I would be able to use Ctrl+Home and Ctrl+End to move to the beginning and end of a document. But then I lockout my function keys, which assume their elevated mode like sound up and down and all other less useful things.
Still in Scrivener, Ctrl+Left and Ctrl+Right retain their default function (i.e. it performs the same whether I lock the Fn key or not) to step to the beginning of the current or previous word, or the beginning of the next word.
Yes, that’s the idea, one document at a time, not the entire manuscript.
The Fn key give the function keys an elevated function (if you will) like turn up brightness or change modes when using an external monitor, etc. Home and End just happen to be in that position (as flavour of the year).
I asked on behalf of others. It takes me a couple of finger flips on the mouse wheel to scroll to the top and bottom of a document.
I still think that is something specific to your laptop model. The Fn key doesn’t modify my ThinkPad Home/End keys and I get no difference in behaviour (or even no event in some cases).
It’s not something we’re doing at any rate. It is not often a good idea to try and use Fn as a modifier key in software since mostly only laptop users have them, and it’s not meant to be used that way, but something the keyboard should be handling itself.
I agree. My experience is they’re forever swapping around the Home and End key and laptops by Windows OEM partners do not have uniform keyboard layouts when it comes to “special functions”.