Windows Keyboard navigation issue (skipping words, sentences or jumping to top and end of document) in Windows 8.1 pro

[FusionNewbie2]

Hi, I am testing the latest Fusion on a Mac book Pro OS X Yosemite and Windows 8.1 Pro. Compared to parallels I love the performance of Fusion.

The biggest problems I have with Fusion  is that the most common keyboard shortcuts I would use in any Windows editor to navigate a text document.   I haven't found away to jump to the next or previous words; nor to the top or end of a document in any Windows editor (I was editing documents in visual studio 2013) .  I can't find any equivalent with the command or option or fn key combinations.     Interestingly enough, Control shift arrows do work for select but I just need to be able to navigate words, beginning and ending of sentences, top and bottom of document.   At this point, I  almost don't care if I have to use the Mac command vs control   that's fine - but even those don't work as expected.  For example, if I hit control left arrow , it switches from my full screen Windows desktop over to my fullscreen Mac desktop.  If I hit control right, it does nothing.  And the option left and right arrows which works fine in Mac for skipping words don't do anything in Windows either.

Windows, the only navigation keys that kind of work is control shift left and right which selects text and not what I want.

I tried mapping the Mac option arrows to Windows control arrows but that didn't seem to make a difference. Maybe I needed to restart the VM I don't know? I hope I am not the only one with this issue     Does anyone have any suggestions - after 30 years of editing I use skipping words and sentences and and Jumping to top and bottom all the time.

Thanks in advance

[wila]

Hello,

You can use the Windows shortcuts as you would normally use them, but it depends on a few settings in the general preferences and configuration per virtual machine.

Have you verified the settings on menu:

VMware Fusion -> Preferences -> General -> checkbox "Enable per virtual machine keyboard shortcuts...."

and menu:

VMware Fusion -> Preferences -> Keyboard & Mouse -> Mac Host Shortcuts -> checkbox "Enable Mac host OS shortcuts"

In my case I've got both checkboxes unchecked, if you check the the per virtual machine keyboard shortcuts then you also have to verify the shortcuts in the Virtual Machine Menu under settings.

hope this helps,

--

Wil

[FusionNewbie2]

HI

I will check this out and get back.  Thanks so much .... Why the option per vitual machine OS??

[FusionNewbie2]

Thank you. This definitely was helpful. However it's painful in that I can only have one physical keyboard. Either a Windows keyboard or Mac keyboard. I could live with the Mac keyboard  although I have used Windows keyboards my whole life.   But the whole idea of VMware is to go back-and-forth between Mac and Windows. So I wish that they would map the control key to the command key and at least I could learn one consistent way of navigating.  Unfortunately somewhat   harder to use a Windows keyboard on mac.   Not impossible but more awkward on a Mac.

But I wish they would map the same Mac text  navigation commands to the windows VM.   Maybe it's easier to do but I'm not getting it. 

[wila]

Hi,

VMware added the keyboard per virtual machine option in Fusion 7, I guess it is for adding more flexibility.

re. Only two physical keyboards, I'm not sure I understand what you mean, do you mean profiles?

There's 3 profiles, Windows, Default and Mac, you can add your own profiles if you like.

As for keyboard navigation, personally in windows VMs I use windows navigation and on Mac I use what is native to Mac, that way I use it properly and am not getting confused when working with physical machines.

If you want to consistently use Mac keyboard settings with windows applications as if in Mac OS X then maybe Unity is more your thing? (Menu -> View -> Unity )

--

Wil