Applications

I have Microsoft Excel for Mac 2011 and have found somewhat annoyingly at least a couple of the shortcut keys aren’t the same on Mac as they are for the Windows edition. This post covers a couple of them and I will add to it as I find alternatives for common functions. Feel free to add a comment below the post if you have a shortcut key you know about that is different between the Windows and Mac editions.

Edit in cell: F2 on Windows = Control+U on Mac

F2 is a nice and easy shortcut key to edit a formula in the cell without having to double click the mouse. For whatever reason, Microsoft have decided to make F2 be “cut” in the Mac edition of Excel instead and there doesn’t appear to be any way to change the shortcut key in any of the settings.

Instead, use Control+U on a Mac to edit in cell. This is an awkward keyboard combination and not at all easy to do with one hand; I usually have to use two hands.

It is also possible to use a 3rd party app to remap F2 to Control+U for Excel. I haven’t used any of these (they’re all pay software) but apparantly it can be done with these: iKey, Keyboard Maestro, QuicKeys, and Butler

New line in cell: Alt+Enter on Windows = Control+Option+Return on Mac

If you want to create a new line in a cell use another awkward keyboard combo on a Mac: Control+Option+Return.

It’s not as awkward as Control+U but it would be nicer if it was simply Option/Alt+Return so it was the same as Windows. Incidentally, Option+Return is just the same as pressing Return so there’s no reason I can see that it shouldn’t be the shortcut for new line in cell.

Other shortcut key combinations that are different

Add any useful keyboard combos in the comments below that are different between the Windows and Mac versions of Excel.

I need to test web forms a fair bit, and there’s also a particular online registration website that I can’t get all the information I need until I’ve submitted an initial form, and got tired of always filling these forms in. So enter the search for a decent automated form filler plugin for Google Chrome.

Notepad++ is a feature rich Windows Notepad replacement. It contains an automatic package update feature in more recent versions but if you are using an older version you will be prompted to download an update package and then apparantly nothing happens.

The prompt

After starting Notepad++, if there is a package update available it will show the following prompt:

This says “An update package is available, do you want to download it?”.

If you click “Yes” then it downloads the update and displays another dialog “Notepad++ is opened. Updater will close it in oreer ot process the installation. Continue?” Clicking “Yes” then appears to do nothing. Starting up Notepad++ again shows the first update prompt shown above again.

Version requirement

The updater only works for Notepad++ versions 5.6.4 and higher. If you have an older version then it will not work, so you have to download an up to date version of Notepad++ from Sourceforge.

Which version

To check which version you are running click the ? menu item in the main menu then “About Notepad++” as shown in the screenshot below.

This will then show the about dialog with the version number, which I have highlighted with a red box in the final screenshot below.

After installing and running, Notepad++ will again check for updates and prompt to download and install with the improved updater. This time when prompted to install and restart it actually does.

Microsoft Windows installs a .NET Framework Assistant for Firefox which cannot be removed from the Firefox add-ons menu and throws errors in the error console. This post shows the error message and how to remove this unecessary add-on.

The Error Message

The error message from the error console looks like this:

Error: uncaught exception: [Exception… “Component returned failure code: 0x8000ffff (NS_ERROR_UNEXPECTED) [nsIPrefBranch.clearUserPref]”  nsresult: “0x8000ffff (NS_ERROR_UNEXPECTED)”  location: “JS frame :: chrome://dotnetassistant/content/bootstrap.js :: BootStrapDotNetAsssitantExtension :: line 52”  data: no]

When I’m looking for coding errors in the Firefox error console I find this one pops up all the time but it’s nothing to do with anything on any website, but some issue with the Microsoft plugin.

How to remove the plugin

The Microsoft Knowledge Base article “How to remove the .NET Framework Assistant for Firefox” contains everything needed to remove the plugin and I can confirm that it works.

Note that this plugin does not appear in the add-ons preferences anywhere in Firefox because, as noted at the above page:

“The .NET Framework Assistant is added at the computer level so that its functionality can be used by all users at the computer level instead of at the user level. As a result, the Uninstall button is unavailable in the Firefox Add-ons menu because standard users are not permitted to uninstall machine-level components.”

To remove it, click through to the knowledge base article using the above link. This requires downloading an update or making some modifications to the registry and Firefox’s preferences.