Chapter 5. Menu and Keyboard shortcuts

1. Main Menu
1.1. Project
1.2. Edit
1.3. Go to
1.4. View
1.5. Tools
1.6. Options
1.7. Help
2. Keyboard shortcuts
2.1. Project management
2.2. Editing
2.3. Moving around
2.4. Other

1. Main Menu

All of OmegaT's functions are available through the menu bar at the top of the Editor window. Most functions are also available via keyboard shortcuts. Shortcuts are activated by pressing Ctrl and a letter. Some shortcuts involve other keys. For readability purposes, letters are written in uppercase here. Ctrl is used on Windows, UNIX and UNIX-like operating systems with keyboards featuring a Ctrl or Control key. Mac users should instead use Cmd+key instead. The "Cmd" key either has a "command" label or an apple symbol on Apple keyboards.

You can customize existing shortcuts or add new ones according to your needs. See Appendix - Shortcuts Customization

Table 5.1. Main Menu

Project Edit Go to View Tools Options Help

1.1. Project

Table 5.2. Project menu

New   Creates and opens a new project. The dialog to create a project is the same as to edit the project. See Chapter 6, Project properties
Open Ctrl+O Opens a previously created project.
Import Source Files...   Copies the selected files to the source folder and reloads the project to load the new files.
Import From MediaWiki...   Imports units from MediaWiki pages, based on the URL entered.
Reload F5 Reloads the project to take external changes in source files, legacy translation memories, glossaries and project settings into account.
Close Ctrl+Shift+W Saves the translation and closes the project.
Save Ctrl+S Saves the internal translation memory to the hard disk. OmegaT automatically saves translations every 10 minutes as well as when you close the project or quit OmegaT.
Create translated documents Ctrl+D Creates the target documents based on your translation of the documents' text. The created target documents are located in the target folder.
Properties... Ctrl+E Displays Project properties dialog to edit project languages and folder locations.
Project Files... Ctrl+L Closes or opens the Project files window (depending on whether it is open or closed).
Quit Ctrl+Q Saves the project and quits OmegaT. If you haven't yet saved the project, this manually confirms whether you really wish to quit.

1.2. Edit

Note: Items that are found in most applications (copy/cut/paste) are not displayed in this menu, but are available using your system shortcuts. For example:

Table 5.3. Copy/cut/paste shortcuts

Copy Ctrl+C Copies the selected text to the clipboard.
Cut Ctrl+X Copies the selected text to the clipboard and deletes the selected text.
Paste Ctrl+V Pastes the text from the clipboard at the cursor position.

The Edit menu itself contains the following items:

Table 5.4. Edit menu

Undo Last Action Ctrl+Z Restores the status before the last editing action was taken. This command does not work once the modified segment has been validated.
Redo Last Action Ctrl+Y Restores the status before the last editing action was cancelled. This command does not work once the modified segment has been validated.
Replace With Match Ctrl+R Replaces the whole target segment with the currently selected fuzzy match (by default the first match is selected).
Insert Match Ctrl+I Inserts the currently selected fuzzy match at the cursor position. If part of the target segment has been selected, this function overwrites the selected portion.
Replace with Machine Translation Ctrl+M Replaces the target segment with the translation, provided by the selected Machine Translation service. No action is taken, if no Machine Translation service has been activated (see Menu > Options below).
Replace With Source Shift+Ctrl+R Replaces the whole target segment with the source.
Insert Source Shift+Ctrl+I Inserts the source at the cursor position.
Insert Source Tags Shift+Ctrl+T Inserts the source tags at the cursor position. All the relevant tags in the source - i.e. OmegaT as well as custom, Java, printf etc tags - will be inserted into the current target, regardless of whether they are already there or not. Texts, bracketed by tags, are replaced by spaces:. <f0><f1>This is text</f0></f1> thus will be copied as <f0><f1>one_space</f0></f1>
Export Selection Shift+Ctrl+C Exports the current selection to a text file for processing. If no text has been selected, the current source segment is written to this file. When the user exits OmegaT, this file is not emptied, in order to be consistent with usual clipboard behavior. The exported contents are copied to the file selection.txt located in the User's preference files folder (see Chapter 8, OmegaT Files and Folders).
Create Glossary Entry Shift+Ctrl+G Allows the user create an entry in the default glossary file.
Search Project... Ctrl+F Opens a new Search window.
Switch case to... Shift+F3 (see text) Changes the case of the highlighted text in the target segment to the selected option (Lower case, Upper case or Title case). Use Shift+F3 to cycle through the three alternatives. If no text is selected, OmegaT selects the word that contains the letter immediately to the right of the cursor.
Select Fuzzy Match #N Ctrl+#N (#N is a digit from 1 to 5) - Selects the Nth fuzzy match displayed in the match viewer to replace or insert it to the segment. The Section 2.2, “Fuzzy matches pane” describes the color coding in detail.
Use as Default Translation   If there's several alternative translations available for the active segment, you can label the alternative selected as the default translation. The entry will be greyed, if there's just one translation available.
Create Alternative Translation   The one and the same segment may, depending on the context, require different translations. Select this menu item, if the current translation does not apply and enter the alternative translation.

1.3. Go to

Table 5.5. Go To menu

Next Untranslated Segment Ctrl+U Moves to the next segment that has no equivalent in the translation memory.
Next Segment Ctrl+N or Enter or Tab Moves to the next segment. If the current segment is the last segment in a file, it moves to the first segment of the next file.
Previous Segment Ctrl+P or Ctrl+Enter or Ctrl+Tab Moves to the previous segment. If the current segment is the first one in a file, it moves to the last segment of the previous file.
Segment number... Ctrl+J The segment is opened when its segment number is entered.
Next Note   The next segment with a note attached to it, will open.
Previous Note   The previous segment with a note will open.
Forward in history... Ctrl+Shift+N OmegaT remembers the segments executed. With this command you can step forward to the segment, you have previously left by the Back in history...command.
Back in history... Ctrl+Shift+P With this command you can move backward one segment at a time, to return later to the current segment using Forward in history... command below.

1.4. View

Table 5.6. View menu

Mark Translated Segments If checked, the translated segments will be marked in yellow.
Mark Untranslated Segments If checked, the untranslated segments will be marked in violet.
Display Source Segments If checked, source segments will be shown and marked in green. If not checked, source segments will not be shown.
Mark Non-Unique Segments If checked, non-unique segments will be marked in pale grey.
Mark Segments with Notes If checked, segments with notes will be marked in cyan. This marking has priority over Mark Translated Segments and Mark Untranslated Segments.
Mark Non-breakable Spaces If checked, non-breakable spaces in the segment will be displayed with a grey background.
Modification Info Setting the Display Modification option to Selected will display the time and the author of the last change in the current segment. Setting it to All shows this information for all segments and None turns this option off.

1.5. Tools

Table 5.7. Tools menu

Validate Tags Ctrl+T: Checks for missing or displaced tags in formatted files. Will display a list of segments with tag errors and possible inconsistencies. See Tag Validation and Chapter 12, Working with formatted text.
Remove Tags When enabled, all the formatting tags are removed from source segments. This is useful when dealing with texts where inline formatting has no real use (e.g., OCRed PDF, bad converted .odt or .docx, etc.) Only inline tags are removed, so normally there should be no problem with opening the target documents. Non-visible formatting (i.e., which doesn't appear as tags in the OmegaT editor) is kept in the target document.
Statistics Opens a new window and displays the project statistics, i.e. the project totals and totals for every file in the project.
Match Statistics Displays the Match Statistics for the project: the number of repetitions, exact matches, fuzzy matches and no-matches, for segments, words and in characters.

1.6. Options

Table 5.8. Options menu

Use TAB To Advance Sets segment validation key to Tab instead of the default Enter. This option is useful for some Chinese, Japanese or Korean character input systems.
Always Confirm Quit The program will see confirmation before closing down.
Machine Translate Allows you to activate/deactivate the Machine Translation tools offered. When active, Ctrl+M will insert the suggestion into the target part of the current segment.
Glossary reserved for future use by plugins
TransTips Allows you to activate/deactivate TransTips feature and set its option Exact Match. With TransTips activated a right click on a highlighted word in the source will open a pop up menu with the glossary entries for the word you clicked. You can then click on the preferred translation to insert it into the target segment at the current position. With TransTips/Exact Match checked, only complete words will be checked, otherwise parts of words will be matched as well.
Font... Shows the dialog to modify the text display font. Users of old computers who feel window resizing is very slow can try changing the font. See font settings in Miscellanea
File Filters... Displays the File filters dialog to configure file handling and parsing.
Segmentation... Opens the Source segmentation dialog to configure text segmentation.
Spell checking... Displays the Spell checker setup window to install, configure and activate the spell checker.
Editing Behavior... Displays the Translation editing dialog to configure.
Tag Validation... For programmers: Allows you to configure the Tag Validator options to check also programming (%...) variables.
Team... Enter your name here and it will be attached to all segments translated by you.
External TMXs... Allows the user decide, how tags in foreign TMX files (i.e. not generated by OmegaT) are to be treated.
View... Contains the option to have all source segments in bold and to mark the first non-unique segment.
Save... Allows the user select the interval - in minutes and seconds - between consecutive automatic saves of the project. The minimum is 10 seconds.
Proxy login... Enter your user name and your password, if you use a proxy to access your projects.
Restore Main Window Restores the components of the main OmegaT window to their default state. Use this feature when you have undocked, moved, or hidden one or more components and you are unable to restore the desired arrangement. It can also be used when panes do not appear as expected following an OmegaT upgrade.

1.7. Help

Table 5.9. Help menu

User Manual... F1: Opens Help browser displaying this manual in a separate window.
About... Displays copyright, credits and license information.

2. Keyboard shortcuts

The following shortcuts are available from the main window. When another window is on the foreground, click on the main window to bring it to the foreground or press Esc to close the other window.

Shortcuts are activated by pressing Ctrl and a letter. Some shortcuts involve other keys. For readability purposes, letters are written in uppercase here.

Ctrl is used on Windows, UNIX and UNIX-like operating systems with keyboards featuring a Ctrl / Control key. Mac users should instead use the cmd+key. On Apple keyboards the cmd key either has a command label or an Apple icon on it.

  • Project management

  • Editing

  • Moving around

  • Reference windows

  • Other

2.1. Project management

Table 5.10. Project management shortcuts

Open project Ctrl+O Displays a dialog to locate an existing project.
Save Ctrl+S Saves the current work to the internal translation memory (file project_save.tmx located in the project's omegat folder).
Close Project Shift+Ctrl+W Closes the current project.
Create Translated Documents Ctrl+D Creates the translated documents in the project's Target folder and creates translation memory files (level1, level2 and omegat tmx files) in the project's root folder.
Project properties Ctrl+E Displays the project's settings for modification, if required.

2.2. Editing

Table 5.11. Editing shortcuts

Undo last action Ctrl+Z Undoes the last editing actions in the current target segment
Redo last action Ctrl+Y Redoes the last editing actions in the current target segment
Select match #N Ctrl+#N #N is a digit from 1 to 5. The shortcut selects the Nth match displayed in the match window (the first match is selected by default)
Replace with match Ctrl+R Replaces the current target segment contents with the selected match (the first match is selected by default)
Insert match Ctrl+I Inserts the selected match at the cursor position in the current target segment (the first match is inserted by default)
Replace with source Ctrl+Shift+R Replaces the current target segment contents with the source text contents
Insert source Ctrl+Shift+I Inserts the source text contents into the target segment at the cursor position
Insert Source Tags Ctrl+Shift+T Inserts the source tags into the target segment at the cursor position
Search project Ctrl+F Displays a dialog to conduct searches in the project
Replace with Machine Translation Ctrl+M Replaces the target segment with the machine translation of the source. No action, if machine tools are deactivated (see Menu > Options > Machine Translate)
Export Selection Shift+Ctrl+C Exports the current selection to a text file for processing.
Create Glossary Entry Shift+Ctrl+G Allows the user create an entry in the default glossary file.

2.3. Moving around

Table 5.12. Moving around shortcuts

Next Untranslated Segment Ctrl+U Moves the editing field to the next segment that is not registered in the project's translation memory
Next Segment Ctrl+N, Enter or Return Moves the editing field to the next segment.
Previous Segment Ctrl+P Moves the editing field to the previous segment
Segment number... Ctrl+J Moves to the segment number entered
Back in history... Ctrl+Shift+P Moves one segment back in history
Forward in history... Ctrl+Shift+N Moves one segment forward in history

2.4. Other

Table 5.13. Various shortcuts

Project files listing Ctrl+L Displays the Project files listing
Validate Tags Ctrl+T Opens the Tag validation window.
Export Selection Shift+Ctrl+C Exports the current selection or the current source, if no text has been selected. The text is exported to a plain text file.
Search Project Ctrl+F Opens a new Search window.
Help files F1 Displays the OmegaT help files in a separate window