Underline Options Shortcut

Opening the Underline Options in InDesign means show­ing the Character palette/panel and select­ing Underline Options from that pan­el’s fly­out menu. It’s not very con­ve­nient or expe­di­ant. Wouldn’t it be nice if there was an easy to remem­ber key­board short­cut for open­ing the Underline Options?

Well, there is.

The char­ac­ter mode of the Control pan­el in InDesign CS2 and CS3, which appears any time the Type tool is select­ed, con­tains the Underline but­ton. Clicking the but­ton under­lines text with the default options. Sometimes the default options are what you want, but usu­al­ly they aren’t; usu­al­ly you’ll want to tweak the appear­ance of the under­line or its dis­tance from the text in the Underline Options dia­log box. The fastest way to get to Underline Options is to hold OPT/ALT while click­ing on the Control pan­el’s Underline button.