Hot Keys are a quick way to replace common keyboard operations with simple key combinations. Five of the Hot Keys are always displayed in the Hot Keys panel. These allow you to quickly open the control panels, open the Chooser panel, open CDU, type your name & address and type today’s date. For example, holding down the Shift, Command, and Option keys simultaneously while pressing the letter P will open the control panels window.
 
There are eight more Hot Keys that are defined in other panels. These are in AppManager, Cursor, Expert, Screen Dimmer, and Security. More details on these can be found in the other sections of the manual. You may have ten user-defined hot keys in the Hot Keys panel.
You can see a summary of all of the current Hot Keys by selecting Hot Key Summary from the CDU Menu. You can also get this summary by clicking the Hot Key summary button in the lower left corner of either control panel. This button is the one with the Command key (‚åò) icon to the right of the Fine-Tune button.
You can create new Hot Keys to open documents or applications, or to type common text strings (like passwords). Use the buttons at the bottom of the Hot Keys panel:
1. Click the Add button. A dialog box will open up.
2. Select Open or Type from the pop-up menu at the top of the dialog box. Leave Open selected if you want to create a Hot key that will open a document or launch an application. Select Type if you want to create a Hot Key that will type a text string.
3. If you left Open selected there will be a button called File... at the right side of the box. Click it. Another dialog box will open. Use this to select an application or document you would like to be able to launch or open using a Hot Key.
4. If you selected Type, the File... button will disappear and a large box titled The Text will appear. Type the text inside the box that you want to have created whenever you use the Hot Key. It can be several lines if you like. Use the Tab key to exit the box when you are done. Common uses for this include passwords as well as name and address information.
5. In either case, click inside the Press box and type the key combination you want to assign to this action. Avoid combinations used for another purpose (for example, Command-C is Copy).
6. If you selected Type in step 2, fill in the box titled Description. This should describe the text string you entered, for example, Name and Title.
7. Click OK. The new Hot Key will appear in the Hot Key panel.
To edit a Hot Key or delete a Hot Key, first select the line in the Hot Key panel containing the Hot Key you want to change or delete. Then click the Edit or Delete button at the bottom of the panel.
When you press Edit, the same dialog box you got when you pressed Add will appear, this time with the current information on the Hot Key. Since this could provide an easy way for someone to find out all your passwords, CDU can protect this information. If you use the word Password anywhere in the Description, CDU will hide the text string in the box labeled The Text from view.
