Adobe Fireworks keyboard cursor keys broken

Recently I had an issue with Fireworks where all the keyboard keys (nudge, delete...etc) stopped working. Luckily I was able to find this simple fix.

Fixing shortcuts in Fireworks

I use Fireworks (CS3) for design work and like any designer I regularly rely on the simple keyboard shortcuts (nudge, delete, undo...etc) to improve my productivity.

The other day however, disaster struck when Fireworks crashed and suddenly all of the keyboard shortcuts stopped responding.

After trawling the net I found this simple fix:

Start Fireworks.
Go to Edit -> Keyboard Shortcuts.
Select "Fireworks" from the "Current set" dialog.
Select "Miscellaneous" from the "Commands" dialog.
In the large drop down below scroll down and select "Nudge Up (UP)".
Focus the "Press Key" dialog below and press the UP arrow cursor key on your keyboard. This should reset the "Nudge Up" command to be UP.

As a result of resetting this one shortcut Fireworks seems to get the kick it needs to restore the keyboard shortcuts. Phew!

I hope this helps someone out, but please remember I only tested this in Fireworks CS3. If someone has this problem in another version of Fireworks please comment below with your fix.

Posted last year by David Smith

Tagged as: Fireworks, Design, Bugs Envato style light and shadow text effect using Fireworks, Change Dash Stroke in Fireworks CS3, Backwards compatible Silk Set icons with Fireworks

David is a web designer and a front end developer for DeepBlueSky Digital. He's reponsible for designing nice things and then making sure they don't break in Internet Explorer. Currently he's mostly interested in javascript and HTML5. You can follow Dave on Twitter as @get_dave or @deepbluetweets.

3 Comments on this post

Peter said “Cursor Keys” a few months ago

Thanks for posting this David - sorted the lost keys for me in Fireworks V8 and saved me time.
David said “Update” a few months ago

Since posting this article I have noticed that when Fireworks resets the shortcuts it actually restores them to factory defaults.
As I haven't done much tweaking these are largely the same as before the crash, but I have had to go in and adjust some settings.
Just so you know...
Adam said “Shortcut Keys Broken” earlier this year

Thanks for the advice. Similar issue on my end. Just shows you how efficient you work with the shortcut keys. It was taking me twice as long and making design even more frustrating. Thanks again David!