Disabling the pesky CTRL-ENTER shortcut

Ever hit CTRL-ENTER by mistake while composing an email in Outlook and wondered what the heck happened? Well, here's the answer. CTRL-ENTER is the not-so-helpful shortcut key for 'Send my email immediately even though I've not yet finished typing it'. Which explains why your email instantly disappears into the cyber-ether whenever your press these two keys simultaneously. And which, of course, is helpful if you want to send your email at that precise moment in time, but a great big pain in the elbow if you don't.

Fortunately, a solution is at hand. You can disable CTRL-ENTER in Word by adding the following registry keys:

Key: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Office\11.0\Outlook\DisabledShortcutKeysCheckBoxes
String Value: CtrlEnter
Value Data: 13,8

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Office\11.0\Word\DisabledShortcutKeysCheckBoxes
String Value: CtrlEnter
Value Data: 13,8

Now enjoy!

[Step by step instructions:

  1. Start, Run, type Regedit press OK
  2. Navigate through the folder tree to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Office\11.0\Outlook\
  3. Go to Edit menu, select New, then Key
  4. Type DisabledShortcutKeysCheckBoxes
  5. Select the new key folder you just created
  6. Go to Edit menu, select New, then String Value
  7. Type CtrlEnter
  8. Double click on the new String Value you created and enter 13,8 in the Value Data field.
  9. Repeat steps 2 to 8 for folder HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Word\11.0\Outlook\
  10. Close the Registry Editor and restart Outlook for the changes to take effect]