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Execution of the sequence ends when it hits a ‘return’. In the sample below, “+^!M::” triggers the action that follows it if you type shift (“+”), control (“^”), alt (“!”) and an M. Note that anything after a semi-colon is ignored as it’s a comment, code steps inside braces are grouped together, and the keyboard triggers precede two colons. – Control-Shift-Alt-P switches to your active PowerPoint presentation, goes back a slide & returns. – Control-Shift-Alt-N switches to your active PowerPoint presentation, advances the slide & returns to wherever previously had focus. – Control-Shift-Alt-M switches to your active Teams *meeting*, toggles the Mute, then returns focus to the original app. All this power in a simple script fileĪll your customisations live in a text file with a “.ahk” extension, the contents written in a relatively straightforward scripting language. So if Microsoft Teams doesn’t have the focus, AHK is able to change focus BACK to it, inject its (local) shortcut, then change back to whatever was “on top” (focussed) beforehand.
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Of particular interest to us in this powerful utility is its ability to query all the running programs – AND CHANGE FOCUS!
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“AutoHotkey is a free, open-source custom scripting language for Microsoft Windows, initially aimed at providing easy keyboard shortcuts or hotkeys, fast macro-creation and software automation that allows users of most levels of computer skill to automate repetitive tasks in any Windows application.” – Wikipedia. The fix is relatively simple, disguised as the open-source utility AutoHotkey, or AHK. Why’s that? They’re not ‘global’ – they’ll only work when the Teams client has the focus. Microsoft Teams has plenty of useful keyboard shortcuts, but if you’re running a complex meeting and maybe using OBS Studio like I did recently, they’re probably not going to work.
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