{"id":92181,"date":"2015-12-01T07:00:00","date_gmt":"2015-12-01T22:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.msdn.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/20151201-00\/?p=92181\/"},"modified":"2019-03-13T12:22:24","modified_gmt":"2019-03-13T19:22:24","slug":"20151201-00","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/20151201-00\/?p=92181","title":{"rendered":"What does Ctrl+Enter mean? It depends on whom you ask"},"content":{"rendered":"

One of my colleagues was baffled by why Outlook displayed this message: <\/p>\n\n\n\n\n
Microsoft Outlook<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
⚠<\/font> <\/td>\n\n

You pressed CTRL + ENTER. <\/p>\n

Do you want to use CTRL + ENTER as a keyboard shortcut for sending a message? <\/p>\n

☐ Do not show this message again. <\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n

\n\n\n
Yes<\/span> No<\/span> <\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n

“I never understood the need for that dialog since I thought Ctrl<\/kbd>+Enter<\/kbd> meant, by convention, send this message. Then one day a former coworker expressed frustration at the dialog because Ctrl<\/kbd>+Enter<\/kbd> means soft return. He’s a few years older so perhaps its a generational thing? I do notice that the various web based email services differ in how they interpret Ctrl<\/kbd>+Enter<\/kbd>.” <\/p>\n

Back in the old days, Ctrl<\/kbd>+Enter<\/kbd> meant “I’m hitting Enter, but I just want you to insert the Enter character, not execute anything.” <\/p>\n

From an MS-DOS prompt, Ctrl<\/kbd>+Enter<\/kbd> inserted a line break but did not execute the command. <\/p>\n

In a multi-line edit control on a dialog box, Ctrl<\/kbd>+Enter<\/kbd> inserts a carriage return into the edit control rather than executing the default button on the dialog box. <\/p>\n

But since nobody uses MS-DOS or dialog boxes any more, these historical meanings are gradually being lost, and Ctrl<\/kbd>+Enter<\/kbd> is pretty much a wide open hotkey that anybody can assign whatever meaning to it they like. (For extra confusion: Some programs use Shift<\/kbd>+Enter<\/kbd> to insert a carriage return into a field.) <\/p>\n

Someday, people won’t even remember what Ctrl<\/kbd>+Insert<\/kbd> and Shift<\/kbd>+Insert<\/kbd> do. (I still use the first one when working in WinDbg, since the modern hotkey doesn’t work; it means “break into the debugger.”) <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Maybe it enters a soft return, maybe it sends a command.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1069,"featured_media":111744,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[2],"class_list":["post-92181","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-oldnewthing","tag-history"],"acf":[],"blog_post_summary":"

Maybe it enters a soft return, maybe it sends a command.<\/p>\n","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92181","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1069"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=92181"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92181\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/111744"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=92181"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=92181"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=92181"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}