Selecting controls in a panel or the Property inspector using keyboard shortcuts

When a panel or the Property inspector has the current focus, you can use the Tab key to move the focus through the panel controls. You can use the Spacebar to activate the control that has the current focus (that is, pressing Spacebar is equivalent to clicking a control in the panel).

When you use the keyboard shortcut for panel controls, focus is applied to a control and the control is activated using the following criteria:

The panel with the current focus must be expanded in order for you to select a control in the panel with the Tab key. If the panel is collapsed, pressing the Tab has no effect.
When panel with the current focus is expanded, pressing the Tab key the first time moves the focus to the panel options menu.
You can use the Right Arrow and Left Arrow keys to move the focus between the options menu and the panel title bar.
If the focus is on the options menu, pressing the Tab key again moves the focus through the other controls in the panel. Pressing the Tab key again will not return the focus to the panel options menu.
When the options menu has the focus, you can press Enter (Windows only) to display the options menu items.
In panels that are grouped, you can use the Up Arrow and Down Arrow keys to move the focus between the options menus of the panels in the group.
You can move the focus to a panel control only if the control is active. If a control is dimmed (inactive), you cannot apply focus to the control.

To move the focus from a panel title bar to a panel options menu, do one of the following:

Press the Tab key.
Press the Right Arrow key. Press the Left Arrow key or Shift+Tab to return the focus to the panel title bar.
If the panel is in a group, press the Up Arrow key to move the focus to the options menu of the panel immediately above the panel with the current focus. Press the Down Arrow key to move the focus to the options menu of the panel immediately below the panel with the current focus.

To move the focus through the items in a panel options menu:

With the focus currently applied to the panel options menu, press the Spacebar to display the options menu items.
Press the Down Arrow key to move through the items in the options menu.
Press Enter (Windows) or Return (Macintosh) to activate the currently selected options menu item.

To move the focus through the controls in a panel:

Press the Tab key when the focus is currently applied to the panel options menu. Press the Tab key repeatedly to move the focus through the controls in the panel.
Press Enter (Windows only) to activate the currently selected panel control.