Work more efficiently with keyboard shortcuts in Business Central

Keyboard shortcuts are important tools for many ERP system users that spend their days entering data and navigating around the system. With Dynamics 365 Business Central, Microsoft has included a comprehensive list of keyboard shortcuts to make actions and navigation easier within the application. The shortcuts discussed below are mostly the same between Windows and macOS, however if a shortcut doesn’t work on macOS, there may be an alternative shortcut listed in Microsoft’s official documentation.

Below is a graphic of some of the most used keyboard shortcuts in Business Central. Using keys like Ctrl and arrows help users quickly from one element to the next while keys like Q and W can pop out pages or open new windows.

General keyboard shortcuts

These general keyboard shortcuts in Business Central assist day-to-day users with actions like navigating drop-down lists, lookup fields, and more.

Show and hide the FactBox pane
Create a new record
Close a newly created record and create a new one
Add a new note for the selected record
Open Tell me
Open tooltip or validation error
Open a drop-down or look up
Open the My Settings page
Open the current card or document in a new window
Insert a new line on a document
Delete the line on a document, journal, or worksheet
Maximize the line items part on a document page
Open help for the page
Navigate when personalizing and customizing
Open the role explorer, a feature overview
Refresh/reload page
Move focus to the next/previous element
Move to next FastTab/part

Alt+F2
Alt+N
Alt+Shift+N
Alt+O
Alt+Q
Alt+Up
Alt+Down Arrow
Alt+T
Alt+Shift+W
Ctrl+Insert
Ctrl-Delete
Ctrl+Shift+F12
Ctrl+F1
Ctrl+Click
Shift+F12
F5/Ctrl+F5
Tab/Shift+Tab
F6/Shift+F6

Navigating and selecting rows in lists

List pages in Business Central include editable tables for items like G/L budgets. These keyboard shortcuts make editing these lists much easier for end users.

Go to first/last field
Go to first/last row
Navigate without losing selection
Select all
Toggle row selection
Add the row/rows to the selection
Add row above/below to selection
Select visible rows above/below
Focus out of the list

Home/End
Ctrl+Home/End
Ctrl+Up/Down
Ctrl+A
Ctrl+Space
Ctrl/Shift+Click
Shift+Up/Down
Shift+Page Up/Down
Ctrl+Enter

Searching, filtering, and sorting lists

Manually searching for line items in a list can be a pain. These keyboard shortcuts speed up the process with easy steps to sort, filter, and search lists.

Sort column in ascending/descending order
Toggle search
Toggle filter pane; focus on field filters
Toggle filter pane; focus on totals filters
Filter on selected cell value
Add filter on selected field
Reset filters

Alt+F7
F3
Shift+F3
Ctrl+Shift+F3
Alt+F3
Shift+Alt+F3
Ctrl+Alt+Shift+F3

Quick Entry and copy/paste

Keyboard shortcuts for data entry tasks are typically most important to end users. These shortcuts make data entry faster by utilizing the Quick Entry feature on cards, documents, and list pages.

Go to next Quick Entry field outside a list
Go to next/previous Quick Entry field
Copy/paste rows
Copy field above into current row

Ctrl+Shift+Enter
Enter/Shift+Enter
Ctrl+C/V
F8

Microsoft continues to update their list of keyboard shortcuts for Business Central, so check in with their official documentation for the ever-growing list.

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