The 10 Best Keyboard Shortcuts for Dynamics 365 Business Central

Hi, Readers.
In Business Central, keyboard shortcuts aid accessibility and can make it easier and more efficient to navigate to different areas and elements on a page. In this post, I will share my 10 most commonly used and favorite shortcut keys, and hopefully give you some help.

Alt+Q: Open Tell Me OR Search data

When you need help with finding something, use the Search icon to search for it. You can also use ALT+Q to start a search.

The in-product search, Tell me what you want to do, can help you:

• Quickly go to things like actions, pages, or reports.

• Search for specific data, either on a list page or in all of Business Central.

• Find Business Central documentation about a subject you’re interested in.

F5: Refresh data (fast)

Refresh the data on the current page. Use this key to ensure that the data on the page is updated with any changes made by others while you’re working.

This is different from Ctrl+F5 and Refresh/Reload in the browser. F5 only updates data. For example, if I insert a piece of data using the API in Power Automate or Postman, I can directly confirm the data using F5 without reopening the page.

Ctrl+Alt+F1: Inspect page and data

The Business Central Web client includes a page inspection feature that lets you get details about a page. Page inspection provides insight into the page design, the different elements that form the page, and the source behind the data it displays. Page inspection helps you:

• Learn the data model behind a page.
• Discover pages and parts that can be reused in your application design.
• Troubleshoot data issues without having to do tasks like copying the production database, viewing the entire source table, or digging into SQL.
• Debug the application, complementing Designer.

You start page inspection from the Help & Support page. Choose the question mark in the top-right corner, choose Help & Support, and then choose Inspect pages and data.

Or, you can just use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+Alt+F1. The Page inspection pane opens on the side. The following figure illustrates the Page Inspection pane on the Customer List page.

More details: What Page Inspection Shows

Tab and Shift+Tab: Move focus to the next/previous

Tab: Move focus to the next control or element on a page, such as actions, buttons, fields, or list headings.

Shift+Tab: Move focus to the previous control or element on a page, such as actions, buttons, fields, or list headings.

This is the basis of keyboard operation. Let’s take a look at a simple test video:

There is another combination similar to this set of shortcut keys, Enter and Shift+Enter.
Enter: Confirm the value in the current field and go to the next Quick Entry field.
Shift+Enter: Confirm the value in the current field and go to the previous Quick Entry field.

This only applies to Quick Entry fields, so if you set commonly used fields to Quick Entry, it will be much more convenient to use this combination.

F8: Copy from cell above

Copy the field in the same column of the row above, and paste it into the current row. You can only do this in editable lists.

Test video:

Using this shortcut followed by a Tab lets you quickly fill out fields in line items that you want to have the same value as the row above.

Crtl+O: Switch companies across environments

Open the Available Companies pane for switching to another company or environment. This is a feature added in Business Central 2022 wave 2 (BC21).

• Visual cues in the app bar help you to quickly understand which company and environment you’re currently working in, and include the company badge if one was specified for a company.
• Activate the company switcher pane from anywhere in Business Central, either from the app bar or using the Ctrl+O keyboard shortcut.
• Search for companies you have access to, grouped by environment, including production and sandbox environments within your organization.
• Switch company in the current browser tab or open the selected company in a new tab to multitask or compare data side by side.

More details: Business Central 2022 wave 2 (BC21): Switch companies across environments

F3: Search

Toggles the search box.

• Activate the search box, so you can start typing your search text.
• If the search box is already activated, F3 returns to the list without clearing the search text.

At the top of each list page, there’s a Search icon that provides a quick and easy way to reduce the records in a list and display only those records that contain the data that you’re interested in.

PS: Business Central 2024 wave 2 (BC25): New options for Search in lists (Modern Search and new OptimizeForTextSearch property)

Alt+F3: Filter to this field

Toggle filtering to the selected value.

• Applies a column filter on the selected field value in the list. This does the same as choosing Filter to this value from a column heading. It opens the filter pane, sets filter to the selected value, while focus remains on cell in the list.
• If the column is already filtered, Alt+F3 clears the filter on that column.

Test video:

PS: You can use Alt+F7 to sort the selected column in ascending or descending order.

Alt+T: Open the My Settings page

Use the My Settings page to manage basic settings for your Business Central. The changes you make only affect your workspace, not the workspaces of other users.

Normally, it takes two clicks to open it, but you can use the shortcut Alt+T to open the My Settings page immediately from any page.

F7, F9, Alt+D, Ctrl+F7 and other function shortcut keys

This type of functional shortcut keys are very helpful in daily work. Usually you need to click an action on the page, but you can easily do it with shortcut keys. Let’s look at some examples, Please note that these shortcuts are not supported on all pages.

F7: Open statistics.

F9: Post, issue, register, or reverse document.

Alt+D: Open the dimension set entries.

Ctrl+F7: Open ledger entries, logs entries, cost entries, and so on.

Others

As a bonus, let me introduce some of my favorite shortcuts outside of the top ten.

1. Ctrl+F12: Switch between slim/wide page

2. Alt+F2: Show and hide the FactBox pane.

3. Shift+Alt+F2: Switch between FactBox areas

4. Alt+F7: Sort by current column

5. Access keys for action bar and navigation menu: To use access keys on a page, first select the Alt key to display key tips, which are letters in small boxes next to the actions in the action bar and navigation menu. More details: Business Central 2023 wave 1 (BC22): Access actions and navigation menu efficiently with keyboard (KeyTips) and Business Central 2024 wave 2 (BC25): Access keys with Key Tips in more languages

Give it a try!!!😁

PS: For a graphical view of the most used shortcuts, choose the following image and download the PDF file.

END

Hope this will help.

Thanks for reading.

ZHU