Shift Selecting

[RalphT]

I recently began using ProShow Gold Slideshow software (for Windows). I'm having a problem making selections by using the "Shift key" method where you click on the first image, hold the shift key down and click on the last image, causing all images in between to be selected as well.

Now before you say it's a ProShow software issue and I should contact them, you should know that if I boot directly into Bootcamp/Windows XP without Mac OSX and Parallels running, I have no problem Shift clicking as described above. It works perfectly. This causes me to believe the issue is in Parallels and not in ProShow Gold.

Any suggestions or explanations you can offer will be greatly appreciated.

 

[strells]

You don't actually mention what the problem you are having is. Are you saying all the images don't get selected? Have you tried control-clicking? Have you tried holding shift before clicking any items instead of after you click the first one? Does shift work correctly in Windows (i.e. you can type capital letters)? You can check the Keyboard preferences under PD preferences to make sure shift isn't assigned to something it shouldn't be.

Steve

 

[RalphT]

Yes, I cannot Shift Select a range of files by clicking on the first file, then hold the Shift key down and click on the last file. All files in between are not getting selected as they should. Yet, it works fine when I boot into Windows directly without running Mac OSX and Parallels.

Yes, Shift works correctly in Windows, too.

Keyboard preferences seem to be fine. There is no Shift key listed than can be changed, so it should be okay.

 

[mvonballmo]

I'm having a similar problem with the shift key and, from what I can tell from searches, the issue has been haunting several versions of Parallels.

I've been using VMWare Fusion for two years and, based on the recent Ars Technica review, I recently took Parallels for a test drive. Almost everything is better than Fusion (as stated in the review) ... except for the shift-key handling.

The problem crops up when you do a lot of text selection with the keyboard and is perhaps related to the special keyboard bindings I use for Windows on Mac. I mapped the following keys (the same as I had in Fusion):

Cmd+Left = Home
Cmd+Right = End
Shift+Cmd+Left = Shift+Home
Shift+Cmd+Right = Shift+End
Alt+Shift+Left = Ctrl+Shift+Left
Alt+Shift+Right = Ctrl+Shift+Right
Alt+Left = Ctrl+Left
Alt+Right = Ctrl+Right

This lets me use the same navigation keys on both Mac and Windows without interfering with the Mac OS X system shortcuts, which I kept enabled.

The key bindings work as expected, but the modifier keys are not "sticky". For example:

- Place the cursor in a line of text
- Press and hold Cmd + Left to go to the start of the line
- Without releasing the Cmd key, press and hold Shift and press Right to select the line to the end
- Now release Cmd while keeping Shift pressed and press Left to back off one character from the end of the line
- Expected: Entire line except for last character stays selected; Actual: cursor is at head of line and nothing is selected

Workaround:

- Place the cursor in a line of text
- Press and hold Cmd + Left to go to the start of the line
- Without releasing the Cmd key, press and hold Shift and press Right to select the line to the end

So far, so good.

- *Release Cmd and Shift*
- Press Shift and Left to back off one character from the end of the line

It seems that the state of the shift key is lost at some point; explicitly pressing the shift key again resets the state to "down", enabling the workaround.

It's very clunky though and gets in my way quite a bit. Is there any workaround that doesn't involve me changing how I select text via keyboard? I already tried uninstalling the keyboard and letting it get reinstalled and that had no effect.

 

[Manski]

@mvonballmo: I've exactly the same problem (which is quite the big deal for me). I've created a support ticket for this problem. Let's see, what they have to say about this.

 

[mvonballmo]

Thanks for creating a support ticket (I haven't bought Parallels yet, so I'm unable to do anything but complain in the forums). I'm interested to hear if they can finally fix this, but have retreated to my VMWare Fusion for now; I'm too old to change my keyboarding habits for one VM.

And I write "finally" because my searches online found complaints about similar behavior stretching back to version 4.

 

[Manski]

Yeah, I probably will go back to VMWare Fusion 4 for now as well (altough it seems to run much slower than Parallels). The problem is clearly a bug, so I won't even attempt to circumvent it by changing the way I use standard Mac key strokes. This needs to be fixed.

As for the ticket: They've escalated to the "Second Level of Support", whatever this means

 

[Manski]

I got an answer from the support today. Basically, what they're saying is: "We won't fix this problem in Parallels Desktop 7. Maybe in version 8 or 9 or 10 or ..." Nice going - they just lost a customer.

 

[joseph.jameson]

I have noticed this problem for a while. Today I found that unchecking the box to "Enable Mac OS X system shortcuts" makes the shift click work. This still isn't the best solution. But, if you're going to be doing a lot of work in Parallels it's not so bad.

 

[Manski]

I use Windows and Mac OS X equally, so your suggestion wouldn't work for. I'm not sure though what "Mac OS X system shortcuts" means in detail (I guess Spaces switching an the like) and I can't check it because I switched back to VMWare because of this.

 

[TikkanaA]

Shift + mouse click to select a range of text or multiple objects

Had the same problem.
To switch off "Mac OS X System Shortcuts" , click on Parallels desktop -> Preferences -> Click on Keyboard on the top menu -> Uncheck "Enable Mac OS X system shortcuts".
The description of this as per Parellels Online Help is
"The Enable Mac OS X system shortcuts checkbox, which is selected by default, allows you to use the default (F9/F10/F11/F12) and custom shortcuts for Mac OS X during your work with virtual machines in Parallels Desktop."

I chose the above option to deselect it, as I can't live without "Shift + Click" to select multiple / range of objects in XP.

 

[Chaitanya_Deshpande]

I did not have this issue with Parallels 9. I was having the same issue after installing Parallels 10 trial.
Unchecking the Secondary click option in Parallels desktop ~> Preferences ~> Shortcuts ~> Mouse Shortcuts fixed the problem for me. See the screenshot attached.