Never let the Caps Lock key ruin your day again!

October 4, 2007

Have you ever been typing away without looking at your keyboard, then when you do, you see that somewhere along the way, you accidentally hit that stupid Caps Lock key and part or all of your text is now in capital letters? ARRRRRGGGGHHHHHHH!!!!! Traditionally, the Caps Lock key is located just above the Shift key. My guess is because you use the shift key to capitalize a single letter at a time and if you have more than one, it’s easy for your little finger to just jump up to the Caps Lock key and capitalize multiple letters without having to put cramps into your pinky from holding down the shift key. That’s all well and good. We need a key that allows us to type all capital letters….if that’s what we want to do. Seriously, though, how often do we need to do that? It’s especially unforgivable in an e-mail. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve hit the send key at the same time I noticed that my message was IN ALL CAPS when I hadn’t intended it to be.

I’m a subscriber to the PC World online newsletter as well as the monthly print magazine. I’ve never been one to mark up articles in magazines but I sit with my handy highlighter whenever I open a new issue of PC World. Those guys have to have the COOLEST tools on the ‘net! The one you’ve got to check out is called SharpKeys. SharpKeys generates registry changes that control keyboard mapping. In the case of the infamous Caps Lock key, I was able to map Caps Lock to the Scroll Lock key. The Scroll Lock key is located at the top of your keyboard over on the far right. On my keyboard, it’s between the Print Scr_Sys Rq key and the Pause_Break key. Don’t ask me what either of those keys do. Google it. I can tell you that in the early days of computer keyboards, the Scroll Lock key did have a function. It allowed you to scroll up and down as well as back and forth to read all of the text on your screen. That was back when screens were tiny and all the text didn’t fit. I think there was some similar use for it in spreadsheet programs that allowed you to move smoothly through a spreadsheet with the arrow keys. Anyway, I’ve never used it and never expected to until now. Now, I’m using it for Caps Lock! (Hey, I just looked at my keyboard and sometime while I’ve been typing this blog entry, I accidentaly hit the old Caps Lock key. I know that because Scroll Lock is lit up. I’d switch the actual keys to remind me that I’ve switched ‘em except for they’re different sizes so they wouldn’t fit.

Anyway, I just had to share this really COOL TOOL with you. If you go to the download page for SharpKeys on PC World, you can get a review from Ron White. One word of caution: If you’re swapping out key mapping, make sure you define both swaps. For example, map the Caps Lock to the Scroll Lock key and then map the Scroll Lock Key to the Caps Lock Key. I’m not going to go into how you do all this. Suffice it to say it’s pretty easy. You can always visit the author, Randy L. Santi’s, page at RandyRants.com for some tips. Sorry, Windows 98 and ME users. This tool won’t work for you. If, however, you use Windows NT, 2000, XP Server 2003 or Vista, you’re in luck!

Now, I just have to get out of the habit of automatically pressing that Caps Lock key to type in all capital letters and use the Scroll Lock key instead. That’ll probably take some time but it’s worth it. BTW: If the Caps Lock key isn’t the one you think belongs somewhere else, SharpKeys can help you remap up to 105 different keys!

WAY COOL!!!!!!Oh, yeah, did I mention that it’s FREE???????

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