/OfficeKeyFix

Primary LanguageC++

OfficeKeyFix

Unbinds the Office Key (Shift+Control+Alt+Win) related shortcuts, also known as the "hyper" key combination, allowing you to use Office+W and other shortcuts in other applications. Or just to avoid opening Yammer by accident.

Shortcuts

Full list of unbound shortcuts and their original behavior (Office means Shift+Control+Alt+Win):

  • Office: Open Office UWP app
  • Office+D: Open OneDrive
  • Office+L: Open LinkedIn by opening https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?linkid=2044786 (which redirects to https://www.linkedin.com/?trk=Officekey) in the default browser
  • Office+N: Open OneNote for Windows 10 UWP app
  • Office+O: Open Outlook
  • Office+P: Open PowerPoint
  • Office+T: Open Teams by opening https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?linkid=2044782 (which reditects to https://teams.microsoft.com/) in the default browser
  • Office+W: Open Word
  • Office+X: Open Excel
  • Office+Y: Open Yammer by opening https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?linkid=2044904 (which reditects to https://www.yammer.com/) in the default browser
  • Office+Space: Open the emoji picker

All the above default shortcuts are disabled by this program.

Install

  1. Download latest release (or build yourself)
  2. Place it in your startup folder - the global startup folder is C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Startup
  3. Run program one time or relog to activate it - you may see a little command window pop up while it does its thing and Explorer will restart automatically
  4. Done!

Build

Visual Studio Solution

There is now a Visual Studio solution supplied.

  1. Ensure you have the latest version of Visual Studio - Community Edition is fine (but VS Code isn't!) with C++
  2. Download or clone the source code and extract it
  3. Double click on OfficeKeyFix.vcxproj to launch
  4. Click the Build menu item then click Build Solution
  5. The bottom pane should show you where it placed the binary, but it should be in the x64 folder of wherever you put the source code

Manual

Compilation setup instructions (archived from original repo).

Development Resources

Microsoft Documentation

Alternatives

This branch is a complete rewrite of this project which removes the explorer restarting and runs in the background ensuring that explorer doesn't try to reacquire the keybindings. It may be useful as well.

Authors

Originally by Anthony Heddings, whose account disappeared years ago. My fork became the new source (presumably) because it just happened to be the oldest.

  • @mlidbom - provided the Visual Studio solution
  • @Vechro - several improvements pulled from their fork
  • @jorystewart - dynamic key checks
  • @Gh3ttoKinG - documentation resources
  • @acook - basic maintenance

The logon branch was written by me (@acook) with almost nothing remaining of the original.

License

To my knowledge Heddings did not leave behind a license or any way to be contacted, just released the code and dipped a year or so later without ever responding to a single message. I believe that this software is useful but that there is no other reasonable way to perform this task in C++ due to the sheer simplicity of it, making it difficult to argue copyrights. Thus, to maintain continuity for the people forking and using it I am placing further changes under the BSD license. This license was chosen because it is the most permissive license which also includes a non-endorsement clause.