Not sure what to get that special D365 accountant in your life? Waited till the last minute and now you don’t have time to buy a gift? Show your appreciation by passing along this list of journal entry tips. Better yet, send a link to our whole series on shortcuts.
#D365Blogs: the gifts that keeps on giving – even during the holidays.
These example screenshots will be from the general ledger journal form, but are applicable across journal types in D365.
Alt+N – Create a new journal
Alt+N can create a new journal header, and also create new journal lines once the journal lines are opened.
While some D365 data has Open in Excel functionality, allowing users to interact with the data through the Excel Data Connector add-in, every list page in D365 can be exported to excel, creating a static download of the data.
Ctrl+Shift+E gets you that excel export in fewer clicks. As a bonus, this shortcut places the selection on the Download button in the following screen, so you can use the Enter button to execute the download.
Ctrl+Shift+E…Enter for a mouse-free excel export of your data.
Export Selected Rows
Only want to export a few selected rows to Excel? Check the desired rows prior to clicking Export to Excel and only those rows will be included in your data.
Export to Excel Power User Tip
The D365 platform now supports exporting up to one million rows of data to excel. With this great power, exercise great responsibility.
Need to export more than a million rows? You should probably look into using a different tool. Excel itself can only handle 1,048,576 rows🙂
On any D365 screen, you can you can enter personalization mode though right-click, select personalize, and then selecting personalize this form. If the options tab is visible, you can also click “Personalize this form” in the Personalize group.
Ctrl+Shift+P is simply a faster way to access the Personalization mode. This can be especially useful when making personalization adjustments for saved views.
Personalization Power User Tips
D365 actually has a full suite of Personalization shortcuts. If you use personalizations frequently, it could be highly beneficial to become acquainted with these. One of my favorite personalization hotkeys is when trying to move the position of a column, I find it much easier to use the arrow keys to move and enter button to set the column than to attempt the adjustment by dragging it with the mouse.
Confirm these shortcuts through the link, as I think this is an experience that will continue to improve.
One of the great things about D365 being browser based is that you can also use the browser’s hotkeys. In both Chrome and Edge, Ctrl+F can be used to search a website. I find this is especially useful when searching for menu items buried deep in a module.
Browser Search Power User Tips
Crtrl+F to find menu items (or other text on page)
Enter toggles to next record
Shift+Enter toggles to previous record
Ctrl+Enter (in Chrome) clicks link
**update** the Ctrl+Enter shortcut also now works in the new Edge browser
On any D365 form, users have the ability to right-click and “View shortcuts”. This brings up a display of all the shortcuts available for that given form, as well as a link to the full list of D365 Keyboard shortcuts.
It’s faster to navigate computer systems with a keyboard than with a mouse. But while the point-and-click of a mouse is intuitive, keyboard navigation has to be memorized and internalized.
I’ve heard stories of managers ripping out the mouses of new investment bankers, forcing them to learn model building completely through excel hotkeys. But there’s no need to boil the ocean. Picking up a tip here and there can, like compounding interest, lead to significant improvement in the user experience over time. Also like compounding interest, we probably underestimate the cumulative value of all these small improvements.
With that in mind, I’m starting Hotkey Highlights* a series of blog posts on simple keyboard tricks that can improve the D365 navigation experience. I hope you enjoy! Subscribe if that’s content you’re interested in – and let me know you have any favorite navigation tips of your own.
*After some research, I realize that “hotkeys” are actually a very specific type of keyboard shortcut, and most of these shortcut tips will not in fact be “hotkeys” in that sense. I briefly considered renaming this series “Shortcut Showcase”, but after some soul-searching decided I did not love that alliteration as much. If this technicality somehow offends you, feel free to reach out and I will happily refund your blog subscription.
iamJoshKnox 