Keyboard Shortcut to add hyperlinks in Mail.app
Tuesday, June 10th, 2008
Hawk Wings reader Adam sends in this tip for creating a custom keyboard shortcut that adds a hyperlink to an email in Mail.app without the need to go searching through its menu options.
Hawk Wings has covered creating bespoke shortcuts before as well as the virtues of moving around in Mail.app using only the keyboard. Few things do more to speed up your email workflow.
So, you can never post often enough about keyboard shortcuts, and this is a good one.
Adam writes:
In Mail.app I wanted ⌘K to be my shortcut for adding a link in the body of a message. But the command is usually only available via the submenu Link > Add… under the Edit menu. On a whim, I went to System Preferences > Keyboard & Mouse > Keyboard Shortcuts, hit the plus sign and in the box for Menu Title entered “Add…” (no quotes, and using Option-Semicolon for the elipsis). It worked!
If you are a visual learner, this screenshot of the process Adam describes might help too:
Mail.app then kindly adds the new shortcut to your menu, so that you never forget it:
Once you get the taste for it, you won’t want to stop there. Add another to insert a bulleted list (if you go for those):
Of course, both these examples are for Rich Text people. I can’t bring myself to abandon plain text — there’s something noble about it, something efficient, something respectful of the recipient’s settings for displaying text; it’s the way our forefathers did email.
But I recognise that I am a dinosaur in these matters.
Great tip, Adam. Thanks!
Tags: Apple Mail, apple mail tips, bulleted lists, customising, hyperlinks, keyboard shortcuts, mail.app, Productivity
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