Helpful Help For Keyboard Junkies

21Apr2009 Filed under: Online Marketing Author: JW

by Diana Adams

In my last post I introduced some of the new features in the AdWords (beta) Interface. I said in that post that I’d come back and discuss more, this time focusing on the Help interface which as I said previously is surprisingly helpful.

For once, Help is actually helpful
Directly in the main screen of the interface, in the lower left corner you’ll find Help. The items at the top of the list will highlight when you mouse over them, and when you click on one of the topics, the help will appear right there in the same portion of the window.

Below the scroll list (maybe your view won’t scroll, but the resolution on my laptop is rather low so I have to scroll to see pretty much anything) there are two items that are static, Keyboard Shortcuts and Help Center. Keyboard Shortcuts are what I really want to discuss but hang on a second for that one ….

Beta is beta
The day I’m playing with this, the Help Center links seem to be broken. It usually pops open another window just as it always has from the Help in the upper right corner where it’s always been (which, by the way, is still visible in my view but the link is broken also, nothing happened when I clicked on it). If you were to click on one of the more ‘internal’ help links that are found under the scrolling list of topics (like the beta resource page link in the image above), a separate help window opens up like it always has. At least it did when I started writing. I just played with it again to confirm and have found that it doesn’t work now. Also, again maybe only this day as I write this, the Search help center at the bottom of help is broken too. That’s why they call this beta right?

Keyboard shortcuts (are really cool)
Now we get to take a look at the really cool feature that has been added into the beta keyboard shortcuts! Granted I realize that not everyone is as big of a keyboard junkie as I am, and many will still prefer to use the mouse to do things, but I find the fact that they have implemented shortcuts to be exciting.

It will take me some time to remember them all, and truth be told I’ll probably only remember the select few that I use all the time. But in the mean time I’m going to print out this here list and keep it handy. Basically I’ve just copied the list direct from the window, but I’m adding my own little notes.

Global navigation: (if you’re a keyboard junkie, think of using the g key as you would control, because all the global navigation shortcuts are preceded by the letter g)

* g then o: Go to All Online Campaigns
* g then c: Go to Campaigns tab
* g then r: Go to Ad groups tab
* g then k: Go to Keywords tab
* g then n: Go to Networks tab
* g then a: Go to Ads tab
* g then s: Go to Settings tab

Table navigation and actions:

* j/k: Next/previous row (this one made me laugh because I saw the j/k and thought just kidding)
* x: Select current row (shift+x for multiple rows)
* p: Pause selected rows
* n: Enable selected rows
* d: Delete selected rows
* l: Download

Editing ad groups and keywords: (and here we get into using the actual control key, ctrl+s being my favorite of all time)

* e: Edit selected rows (e is for edit, I’ll remember that one!)
* ctrl+arrows: Move between editable fields
* ctrl+s: Save changes
* esc: Cancel edit mode

And there in lies all I have to say about the AdWords (beta) Interface Help section… perhaps when the links to ‘help’ are not broken I’ll be able to discuss more about other features. Until then, enjoy and have fun. (keyboard junkies)

Check out our small business news site.