Keytips in Ribbon Controls

Keytips are access keys / keyboard shortcuts that enables you to access a ribbon control. You can activate the keytips by pressing [Alt] on your keyboard. Thereby under each control on the ribbon a control tip with the corresponding keytip will be shown.

If you don't assign a keytip to a ribbon control then Access respectively Office uses its own keytip for the control.

A keytip consists of up to 3 characters and may contain the numbers 0-9 and the letters A-Z (capital letter) in any combination.
A keytip must be unique for all tabs.
A control keytip must be unique for all controls on a tab.

You can add a keytip to a ribbon control by using the attribute "keytip".

Samples:

 <tab id="tab0" 
      label="Start" 
      keytip="ST1">
   <button id="btn0" 
           size="large" 
           label="Button 0" 
           keytip="BTN" />

Restrictions:

• Some keytips for tabs are dedicated to be used by Access itself.

For the German and English version of Access I have ascertained the following tab keytips are unavailable
(These will be replaced by Access / A collection of sample databases for testing can be found here:  Download)

English Access Version:

startFromScratch=false, single letter as keytip

Runtime simulation (extension .accdr), two letters for each keytip

ribbon startFromScratch	true	false
Accdb (single letter as keytip)	E, F, T, V, Y	A, C, E, F, H, T, V, X, Y
Accdb (two letters for each keytip)	E, T, V	E, T, V
Runtime simulation:
Accdr  (single letter as keytip)	F	F
Accdr  (two letters for each keytip)	-	-

 

German Access Version:

startFromScratch=false, single letter as keytip

Runtime simulation (extension .accdr), two letters for each keytip

ribbon startFromScratch	true	false
Accdb (single letter as keytip)	A, B, D, X, Y	A, B, D, E, K, L, R, X, Y
Accdb (two letters for each keytip)	A, B, X	A, B, X
Runtime simulation:
Accdr  (single letter as keytip)	D	D
Accdr  (two letters for each keytip)	-	-

• A keytip can not be assigned to a Ribbon Group.
• A keytip can not be assigned to a Gallery-Item.
• A keytip can not be assigned to a DropDown-Item.
• A keytip to a Menu/SplittButton -Control (Button, ToggleButton, Checkbox, Menu-Control on a menu) can be assigned using  keytip="ABC",
  but it will not be used. The same behavior applies to a button on a gallery control.

Tip: To assign a control tip for such a control, place a "&" on the label in front of the shortcut.

label="My &Label"

In XML replace the sign "&" with "&":

label="My &Label"

This will show the ribbon control with an underlined "L". If the [Alt] key is pressed the control tip appears as an "L".

If you only want to show the "&", and not use it as a shortcut key,double the sign:

label="One && One results &2"

As a result you get the control labeled : "One & One results 2"
The number "2" is shown underlined and is used as access key.

A sample can be found here: Download