Example - Mac Boot Camp: fixed positions of Alt, Windows and Ctrl keys

1. Alt Keys Excel Mac
2. Alt Key Shortcut Mac
3. F4 Key On Mac Excel
4. Mac Symbol Shortcuts
5. Mac Keyboard Shortcut To Insert A Square

Now in windows I was very much used to Alt key based shortcut functions that use to help me in navigating the ribbon specially in Excel. For example Alt+H+W use to wrap the text in the cell column of Excel on PC, Alt+H+B+A will put a border on all sides of the cell. To type a special character, using an Alt keyboard sequence: Ensure that the Num Lock key has been pressed, to activate the numeric key section of the keyboard. Press the Alt key, and hold it down. While the Alt key is pressed, type the sequence of numbers (on the numeric keypad) from the Alt code in the above table. A simple solution to this problem is to remap the Windows and ALT key and the command and option/alt keys on the Windows PC keyboard connected to the Mac, so that the keyboard layouts will mimic expectations based on the standard Apple modifier key layout, rather than what it says on the PC keyboard. For most Mac users who connect a PC keyboard. If you’re a long-time Mac user transitioning to a Windows keyboard, the Windows key, which is equivalent to the Mac's Command key, may occupy the physical position of the Option key on a Mac keyboard. Likewise, the Windows keyboard's Alt key is where you expect to find the Mac's Command key. Mac keyboards have Option and Command keys where standard PC keyboards have Alt and Windows keys. The keyboards are otherwise pretty similar, but new Mac users will need to understand these different keys. Apple’s Mac keyboards actually do have a Control (Ctrl) key, but the Control key doesn’t function like the Control key on Windows.

Layout files: US MBP Swapped Alt and Win.zip , US MBP Swapped Alt and Win with right Ctrl.zip

You can use the free Demo version to test and preview this layout. A Premium, Personal or Lite edition is needed for deploying it.

Swapping the Alt and Windows keys

For users who have installed Windows on an Apple Mac computer via Boot Camp, the placement of Windows and Alt keys is a source of recurring annoyance: these keys are mapped to Mac's Command and Option keys respectively, meaning that their position is inverted relative to where they are found on standard Windows keyboards:

Fortunately, this anomaly is easy to fix with KbdEdit. Following is a step-by-step guide to applying the necessary customisations:

1. Switch to the Low-level editor.
2. Move the mouse to the LAlt key (Left Alt, immediately to the left of the space bar), drag it, and drop it onto the LWin key.
   This will result in the swapping of VK mappings of the two keys.
   Important: do not hold the Ctrl key during the drag-drop operation - this ensures that dropping executes the desired move, ie swap operation.
3. Now do the same to swap the RAlt and RWin keys.

With these customisations, the Alt and Win keys are now mapped to the expected physical positions:

The ready-made layout file US MBP Swapped Alt and Win.zip contains these customisations applied against the standard US English layout.

Adding the right Ctrl key

Fixing the positions of Alt and Win keys is a step in the right direction, but the customised layout still lacks the right Ctrl key, which can be an impediment in typical Windows applications, which rely heavily on Ctrl-based UI shortcuts.

This defficiency can be easily fixed by converting the right Win key from the previous example to right Ctrl:

1. The starting point is assumed to be the layout where Win and Alt keys have already been swapped.
2. Switch to the Low-level editor.
3. Select the RWin key (immediately to the right of the space bar). This is the key that was originally mapped to RAlt in the 'vanilla' layout. To make sure you have selected the correct key, the 'Scan code' field should be showing 0x38 ext.
4. Now choose VK_RCONTROL trom the Assigned virtual code drop-down.
   - or, alternatively -
   Drag the RCtrl key, and drop it onto the RWin ie 0x38 ext key while holding down the Ctrl key on your physical keyboard.

The resulting layout now has the Control key mapped to the physical Right Option Mac key:

The ready-made layout file US MBP Swapped Alt and Win with right Ctrl.zip contains these customisations applied against the standard US English layout.

Example - Mac Boot Camp: fixed positions of Alt, Windows and Ctrl keys

Alt Keys Excel Mac

Layout files: US MBP Swapped Alt and Win.zip , US MBP Swapped Alt and Win with right Ctrl.zip

You can use the free Demo version to test and preview this layout. A Premium, Personal or Lite edition is needed for deploying it.

Swapping the Alt and Windows keys

For users who have installed Windows on an Apple Mac computer via Boot Camp, the placement of Windows and Alt keys is a source of recurring annoyance: these keys are mapped to Mac's Command and Option keys respectively, meaning that their position is inverted relative to where they are found on standard Windows keyboards:

Fortunately, this anomaly is easy to fix with KbdEdit. Following is a step-by-step guide to applying the necessary customisations:

1. Switch to the Low-level editor.
2. Move the mouse to the LAlt key (Left Alt, immediately to the left of the space bar), drag it, and drop it onto the LWin key.
   This will result in the swapping of VK mappings of the two keys.
   Important: do not hold the Ctrl key during the drag-drop operation - this ensures that dropping executes the desired move, ie swap operation.
3. Now do the same to swap the RAlt and RWin keys.

With these customisations, the Alt and Win keys are now mapped to the expected physical positions:

The ready-made layout file US MBP Swapped Alt and Win.zip contains these customisations applied against the standard US English layout.

Alt Key Shortcut Mac

Adding the right Ctrl key

Fixing the positions of Alt and Win keys is a step in the right direction, but the customised layout still lacks the right Ctrl key, which can be an impediment in typical Windows applications, which rely heavily on Ctrl-based UI shortcuts.

F4 Key On Mac Excel

This defficiency can be easily fixed by converting the right Win key from the previous example to right Ctrl:

1. The starting point is assumed to be the layout where Win and Alt keys have already been swapped.
2. Switch to the Low-level editor.
3. Select the RWin key (immediately to the right of the space bar). This is the key that was originally mapped to RAlt in the 'vanilla' layout. To make sure you have selected the correct key, the 'Scan code' field should be showing 0x38 ext.
4. Now choose VK_RCONTROL trom the Assigned virtual code drop-down.
   - or, alternatively -
   Drag the RCtrl key, and drop it onto the RWin ie 0x38 ext key while holding down the Ctrl key on your physical keyboard.

Mac Symbol Shortcuts

The resulting layout now has the Control key mapped to the physical Right Option Mac key:

Mac Keyboard Shortcut To Insert A Square

The ready-made layout file US MBP Swapped Alt and Win with right Ctrl.zip contains these customisations applied against the standard US English layout.