Some Excel users pop F1 off their keyboards (2012)

1. It’s a bank. 2. Banks lock down their computers. 3. So you cannot install other software to fix this in software. 4. You do not have access to the system low enough to rename / remove the winhelp.exe crap. 5. No 3rd party hardware is allowed in the bank. So no bringing your own keyboard.

All the time we get into this threads on HN where the techie goes well you could just...bla bla bla. In the real would of corporate IT everything you say is a non-starter.

The insights designers get from just watching someone use a product are always delightful. The idea is basically ethnography for design. (https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/book/the-encyc...)

'Desire lines' in parks are one example. Desire lines are the paths in the grass that get worn down because people use them even though the designer didn't plan for it.

It's sitting there in that block of six keys that you use all the time when editing text (home, end, page up/down, delete), and it's a little timebomb. You would invariably hit it by accident at some point and change your editor into "overwrite all my stuff" mode.

It would usually take a minute or two of ruining your document before you realized what was happening and spent the next several minutes repairing the damage.

I would go years at a time without ever hitting that key on purpose, so I just kept it in a drawer, in case it ever needed using.

Now, as a developer, there's an Insert in tons of useful keyboard combos, so it needs to stay there. And laptops have ruined that old useful six-key block so it's a lot rarer to hit it by accident.

But it had no business being there. Fifteen years later, I'm still not a friend of that key.

However, I remember trying to map capslock to control on windows a few years back. It involved becoming an administrator and entering an opaque hexadecimal key into the registry.

Simply popping off the key is probably easier.

Oh, on linux it boils down to "setxkbmap -option ctrl:nocaps", which doesn't require root...

I do keep the F1 key somewhere safe, to put back onto the keyboard, for the next keyboard user.

Same thing happens in programming circles. I am not exempt: All my MacBook keyboards get their caps lock keys remapped to control, in honor of my Apple II childhood and SunOS pizza box college heritage.

But everyone can pop some keys from his/her keyboard. Plus it's a much easier (and fun) office mod than messing around in the settings of all your applications ;)

I've popped it off more than once but couldn't get used to not hitting F3 instead of F2.

What I ended up doing was to rename Windows Help (winhlp32.exe at the time) to something else then copy and rename cmd.exe (or command.com, depending on how far back) to "winhlp32.exe". Now when I pressed F1 it would open a command window, much more useful and less intrusive if hit accidentally.

I bet the people removing caps lock, scroll lock, insert etc are doing it because of the "cleaning ladies"! Not because they accidentally hit the keys.

But because in most offices, keyboards are swiped clean daily by cleaning crews and when you arrive each morning you find an assortment of those keys toggled on or off.

(I have even locked my Windows account on occasion due to not noticing a combination of Caps Lock / Num Lock toggled on/off in the morning)

Just fix Excel so that a second press of F1 makes the help screen go away, even if the browser is still launching.

Even today I'm wary of task switching from a game, as it still doesn't seem to be entirely robust

[0] https://dlcdnimgs.asus.com/websites/global/products/APfLG1Rk...

Luckily if I close it immediately without navigating, Chrome is clever enough to return me to the last tab

I tried living without adblocker for a while, but I started getting some very not safe for work ads from dhgate all over the place. Just because I buy electronics doesn't mean I want ads for lingerie...

Wish I had the source code for the program.

I have never understood the hatred for caps lock. I use it all the time, probably press it 12 to 20 times a day. I also write a lot of reports with a pile of long acronyms that have to be all caps.

F2 for cell edit makes it super easy to hit F1...which brings up help...which you can't just hit escape to dismiss.

I'm actually a better than average typist, but yeah...that happens to me more than I like.

It's disappointing but unsurprising they didn't just have windows (autohotkey?) map it to F2.

Now I use a MacBook Pro I've remapped it to be escape - which is doubly useful as escape doesn't exist as a physical key!

I have similar "by feel" approaches for F3 and F4.

My background is in banking, here is some additional info on the F1 key thing in case anyone is interested in this random odd topic:

The article is not exactly wrong but it's misleading (more on that later). Yes the F1 key opens the Excel Help Window. Removing the F1 key is NOT a common practice among bankers.

The origin, or one of the origins, of removing the F1 key as seen in this article, comes from how banks used to train their new interns and first year employees to use Excel. The first few weeks on the job at a Wall St bank were spent in a little training course and the training course was allowed to have a bit more "fun" than the real more professional side of the job soon to come for these rookies.

It was important to teach new banking analysts to be very efficient in Excel, this meant requiring them to memorize how to use the features of Excel without needing to look it up in the Help Menu AND training them to use keyboard shortcuts not the mouse, as keyboard shortcuts are faster. What this led to was some Wall St banks in their training class would have a little fun in training and tell new analysts/students to unplug the mouse from the computer (so you have to learn the keyboard shortcuts) and tell them to remove the F1 key (so they can't just look up how to do something that they should have memorized).

Of course, these training aid tactics of silliness were only relevant for the first few weeks on the job. As new analysts would very soon start learning all about macros and VBA in the second half of the training course. The F1 key can easily and quickly be disabled in a number of ways in the VBA editor of Excel [1] and the idea that a bunch of bankers are removing the F1 key from the keyboard so they don't accidentally press it while reaching for F2 as this article describes is frankly ridiculous. Everyone uses macros and if F1 is disabled it is coded not physically removed, more than likely the help menu has been remapped to a multi-key shortcut just in case.

To those comments who say this is banking and the computers are locked down to the point you cannot install other software or make changes to current software, this is partly true but this does not extend to blocking employees from macros and VBA in Excel. Using and writing Excel macros is crucial to the job and it is expected to be utilized. I have never seen a bank where access to macros and VBA is blocked.

Now, it is possible to go to a bank and see someone has removed their F1 key from their keyboard. But it is not a common practice. IF you do see an F1 key removed it usually is because either: (1) the person removed the F1 key during training and then lost it or just never replaced it. (2) They are a brand new employee still in training (though less likely because training has changed in recent years and fun is not allowed anymore). (3) They were told incorrectly by a frat buddy or other "wall street bro" that removing the F1 is cool and sign of being an Excel ninja wizard. Reason 3 is sadly the most likely reason and if you read the article you will see they only spoke to and interviewed banking analysts, i.e. brand new rookie employees, not real investment bankers who have been on the job more than a few months and are out of the analyst phase.

If I saw an F1 key removed at a bank keyboard I would judge that person a little as it would not reflect very well on an experienced banking employee - unless that person was on one of the tech teams in which case they can do what they want and many have their own keyboards (which are loud guys) and I wouldn't question their computer knowledge skills. The main reason not to permanently remove the F1 key after training is because other important finance software (like Bloomberg) needs the F1 key for other functions (in fact the bloomberg terminal official keyboard moved the help key to its own different button and its on a different row from the F1-F12 keys).

Also, having worked at Microsoft very briefly I think I can say Microsoft is aware of the issue of the F1 key Help Menu bothering some users where it is located and how slow the Help Menu can be. Back in 90s they used to talk to their customers and power users all the time and it's likely they still do today, in addition the telemetry they snatch from everyone these days. They know, they aren't changing it.

Lastly, while this was a mild case of an outdated and misleading article with a clickbait headline, business insider is usually much worse and I would just like to recommend that business insider be considered a fake news site and spam and blocked from Hacker News. Just a suggestion. Thank you.

A small plastic cage that slips over a key and doesn't allow it to be pushed by accident, but still allows it to be pushed with extra force.

Kinda like the safety on a glock.