I need help...hoping someone can tell me what I did. I've been using SH for 2 years now, but only as an autocorrect, so I'm not savvy. Somehow, I think I have created a macro to make my work software ignore my enter key. I have to use the mouse to fill in my demographics, etc, and it is very frustrating. When SH is off, everything is fine, so at least I've finally figured out what is causing my problem...after going through 3 keyboards and 2 machines.

Can anyone help me? I don't even know where to begin to look.

TIA

Hi, stay4while. Welcome!

I wish I could give you some solution to do with Shorthand, but I really can't think of anything. All I can come up with is, open Shorthand last in your sequence of programs. And also, what is your platform? If opening SH last doesn't help, I would email Shorthand tech support about this.

By the way, generally one can move through demographic type boxes with the Tab key; Shift + Tab will go backwards through the boxes.

You didn't by some odd chance put a shortcut into Shorthand for the Enter key, did you? If you bring up Shorthand and scan down all your entries, look in the Shortcut column and see if you see "Enter" there. If you do, delete that shortcut and see how things work. Otherwise I'll keep trying to think of other ideas. Let me know what you find.

Thanks for your help.

I've found what I did and, yes, I did somehow put a shortcut in for the enter key. The problem I am having now is that the dictionary seems to be a read-only file and it will not let me change that and thus, I cannot modify or delete the entry. I have tried going through properties, etc, and the read-only box was never checked, but it did say that it was blocked (by windows I'm assuming). However, when I unblock, it doesn't make a difference. This is a dictionary I have imported from my old computer (which died last Thursday) to my new one.

Anyone else have suggestions?

Tabbing over is fine, but in my patient lookup software, an enter key is required for some navigating .

Not really sure what to say there. Is your file "protected"? Can you go into Dictionary on the Menu, then down to Protect and is there a license # entered in there that is stopping you from editing it.

It isn't an entry from a linked dictionary, is it? If it were, when you got the Read Only message, it would probably say - "Read only - Linked from <some path>". If that were the case, you would need to open that linked dictionary, go to its tab and edit from there.

One other, perhaps crazy, thought. Could you possibly create a new dictionary (File>>New) and then from your old dictionary highlight everything, right click and copy and then go to the new dictionary, right click and paste everything in. Maybe you could delete that bad entry from the new dictionary and just close out the old dictionary. I don't know much about using protected dictionaries though so maybe it wouldn't let you do that.

Thank you for your suggestions. It is from a linked dictionary...and I still haven't been able to fix my problem. So, I have given up and I'm in the process of reentering everything back into SH.

I will try your C&P idea, as my work has slowed down to a snail's pace.

Thanks again. I really do appreciate your help

If it is from a linked dictionary, do you have access to that dictionary on your PC? If so, you would just need to open it if it is not already open (File>>Open), then click on that Tab at the bottom to make it the active dictionary, and delete that entry. Alternatively, unless you need a lot of other entries from that linked dictionary, you could just unlink it (File>>Preferences>>Tab 5 Links, click on the dictionary and click Remove). There is also a set of icons in about the middle of your shorthand screen, one looks like a piece of paper with a chain on it, 2nd from the right, and that is like a toggle to link and unlink dictionaries. I'm sure if you toggled that button that you would unlink from that other dictionary as well.

If you do not have access to the dictionary (on a network or something you do not have access to), can you contact the person who "owns" that dictionary and ask them to remove it? Otherwise, the copy and paste idea SHOULD work (just tried it on my own by copying 7 linked dictionaries, pasting it into a new one and deleting a linked item, took less than a minute) and be very quick because you can highlight all the entries in your dictionary (click on the first entry, scroll down to the last one, hold shift and click the last one so all are highlighted), right click, Copy, go to new dictionary, right click on any line, paste. Then go to that bad entry, click on it and delete it.