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Typing tabs and carriage returns into text areas System
klieb2000's tip about importing CSV data into AppleWorks mentioned a workaround for typing a tab into a textarea (rather than tabbing to the next control). Instead of copy pasting a tab into the find and replace fields, just press Option-Tab (or Option-Return to type a carriage return) instead of activating the default button).

Using the Option key to switch the default behaviour of tab works in most applications with a find box (Safari, TextEdit, Terminal, etc), and even works in some applications with multiple text fields. For example, Option-Tab in Eudora allows you to tab from the body field to the subject field instead of typing a tab.

One disappointing exception is Mail. The only way to escape the body of the message from the keyboard is to Shift-Tab (incidentally, there is also a bug in Mail that stops you from tabbing between the fields in the find/replace dialogue box ... again you have to Shift-Tab).
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Shift-Tab and Find Dialog
Authored by: iRideSnow on Dec 09, '03 03:10:05PM

If you're using Jaguar, this shift-tab thing in the Find Dialog is a system-wide bug as far as I can tell. I first noticed it using ProjectBuilder, but then found it to be a system wide problem with the Find Dialog box. For me, using tab the first time (or perhaps the first few times) would work, but at some point it would stop working and I would need to use shift-tab. This is a reversal of the standard because shift-tab is supposed to take you *back* one field whereas tab takes you forward. For whatever reason, the Find Dialog would get confused and reverse this behavior.

I haven't yet noticed this happening with Panther. Although I became so used to hitting shift-tab, I may just have not noticed if the problem is still there in Panther or not.

Rob



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