In this tutorial we will look at customising the toolbars and menus and creating your own keyboard shortcuts. There is a short video that accompanies this tutorial.

There are three main toolbars visible by default in all ShareScope versions. These are the:

Main toolbar:

Settings toolbar:

Graph toolbar: (actually displayed vertically on the right hand side of your screen)

Note: In Gold the Graph toolbar is only visible when you are in a graph screen, in Plus/Pro the buttons will be greyed out if you do not have a graph window selected.

You may find that you do not use all of the buttons on the toolbars provided, and that, in fact, there are other buttons that you would prefer to have on the toolbars instead. You can control which buttons are displayed and where they appear on the toolbars. Let’s look at adding a button to the Main toolbar so we can quickly access the list of FTSE350 shares.

To change a toolbar, right click on any of the buttons on the toolbar you want to change and select ‘Customise Toolbars…’

The following dialog is displayed:

The dialog in ShareScope Gold does have subtle differences, including the lists that are available and the ‘Active’ option on the left.

Note that the selected toolbar is highlighted on the left.

In all versions of ShareScope though, with this dialog open you should see the ‘Show FTSE 350 Ord. shares list’ option in the middle window. Select this item. The window on the right shows the buttons already on the toolbar. Scroll down until you can see ‘Show FTSE 100 Ord. shares list’ and select this as well – your dialog should now look something like this:

Now click on the arrow button that you see outlined in red above. This moves the ‘FTSE 350’ item into the right hand window, below the ‘FTSE 100’ item; thus the reason for selecting the ‘FTSE 100’ item. If you did not select this, or selected the wrong item in the right window, you can still change the position of the item on the toolbar by using the or buttons.

Before you close this dialog, have a look at the toolbar and check that the button is there and is where you want it to be. Click on OK to confirm the changes you have made, or click Cancel if you do not want to keep your changes.

There are many more buttons that you can add – have a look at the options available under each tab to find the items that you use most often. Use the button to remove any items from the toolbar that you do not want.

You can also customise the buttons further by removing the text or icon from the button and you can add colour flags to List buttons. The five buttons below demonstrate five different ways of customising the FTSE 100 list button:

On the Settings tab you will find further options to customise the position of the selected bar, the icons and text and the size of the buttons. In ShareScope Gold you can also select on which screens you want to see specific toolbars (this is how the Graph bar only appears when on a graph screen).

When you right click on any of the toolbars, from the Toolbar context menu you will see some further options that are available:

You can ‘Delete’ any individual button from a toolbar by right clicking on the button you want to remove and then select ‘Delete Button’. The ‘Edit Button…’ option allows you to customise an individual buttons display properties in relation to the Icon and Text and any mnemonic or colour flashes if selecting a list button.

If you make changes to the toolbars, or if you lose any toolbars, you can revert to the Default Toolbars supplied when you first install ShareScope by selecting this item from the menu.

There are also three toolbar button sizes available – choose the best to suit your screen size and eyesight.

In ShareScope there are a number of preset keyboard accelerators or shortcuts. These include the Enter and Esc keys to cycle through the main views available in ShareScope – the List Table, Historical Graph, Intraday Graph (Plus/Pro), and Details page.

Press the \ key for news on the selected share, the > key for the company’s key dates or / for a historical price list. The F9 key runs the end of day update; F11 displays your current portfolio list; + displays the transactions page for the current portfolio; and F12 allows you to select a new portfolio to view or create. The TAB key is a new shortcut that restricts your current list to shares making a new high, then a new low, then shows the full list again.

You can add your own keyboard accelerators for certain actions in ShareScope. Let’s create a shortcut for drawing a circle on a graph. As you can see from the image above, you can right click on a toolbar to access the Keyboard accelerators option from the menu, or go to the Tools menu at the top of your screen for the same option. The following dialog is displayed:

Click on the Graphs tab at the top and scroll down until you can see and select the ‘Draw circle’ option.

Without clicking anywhere else, press the Shift and C keys on your keyboard (you could choose a different combination, this is only an example). You will see these appear in the dialog:

This combination is not currently in use so is available to use on this action. Click on the Set button and then click on OK to close the dialog.

If you then go to a Graph screen and press Shift and C together you will then be able to left click and drag on the graph to draw a circle. Without having this keyboard accelerator in place, in order to draw a circle you would have to right click in the graph, go to Lines and Text and then select Draw a Circle.

When you right click in the middle of the ShareScope screen you see a context menu that allows you to change the items displayed or customise the view. As with the toolbars, there may be items on these menus that you never use, or items on sub-menus that you would rather have on the main menu for faster access. You can now move the items around on the menus, hide them or move them into or out of sub-menus.

Right click in the graph screen again and at the bottom of the menu you should see the option to Customise Menu… The following dialog is displayed:

Notice first the menu items in blue – these tell you that these sub-menus may appear in other context menus, so if you change the menu items on these here they will change in the other context menus.

To move items within the menu, click on one and drag it up or down. To remove an item from the menu, click on it and drag it off the menu to the left. To move items from or to a sub-menu, open the sub-menu by double clicking on the arrow .

If you remove an item and then want to add it back in, click on Add item to see those that have been removed, or at the bottom of the menu you will find a ‘Full menu’ option that lists the original menu and its items.

To restore any menu or sub-menu to its original state, click on the Default menu button (select a sub-menu first to restore the sub-menu items).

Once you have made your changes, click on OK to save them. When you next right click to view the context menu you should see your new customised menu.

Remember, if you have any trouble finding or using any of these features, please don’t hesitate to call our Customer Support team. They will be delighted to help.