Accelerators are closely related to menus both provide the user with access to an application's command set. Typically, users rely on an application's menus to learn the command set and then switch over to using accelerators as they become more proficient with the application. Accelerators provide faster, more direct access to commands than menus do.

At a minimum, an application should provide accelerators for the more commonly used commands. Although accelerators typically generate commands that exist as menu items, they can also generate commands that have no equivalent menu items. See also: ACCELERATOR Table Resource.

An ASCII character code or a virtual-key code can be used to define the accelerator. An ASCII character code makes the accelerator case sensitive. Thus, using the ASCII "C" character defines the accelerator as ALT+C rather than ALT+c. However, case-sensitive accelerators can be confusing to use. For example, the ALT+C accelerator will be generated if the CAPS LOCK key is down or if the SHIFT key is down, but not if both are down.

Typically, accelerators don't need to be case sensitive, so most applications use virtual-key codes for accelerators rather than ASCII character codes.

Avoid accelerators that conflict with an application's menu mnemonics, because the accelerator overrides the mnemonic, which can confuse the user.

1. Select the target accelerator resource from the Resource Tree.
2. Press the Resource Editor button to edit this selected accelerator table.
3. Select the key item from the Table and make changes to its flags or code.
4. Press OK to close the Resource Editor and select 'File' -> 'Save File As ...' to save the changes you've just made to the target file. If warned that the image size has changed, click "Yes" to update the file size.

Accelerator IDs can not be edited. These values are hard coded into the target file. Changing them is likely to cause the modified program to crash.

Rollback. There are two rollback buttons: Total rollback restores all changes, Local rollback restores only changes made to a selected menu item.

Any change you make can be restored prior to quitting the editor using the OK button. To abort your changes quit the editor using the Cancel button.