A Quick Way to get to the Script Editor in Designer

When you first start up Designer, the script editor is only half visible just underneath the toolbar. Usually I make it a little bigger by moving the thumb down a bit, like this:

Then I double click on the thumb to move it all the way to the top, and double click again to re-expand.

But this is very inconvenient. The script editor is not really big enough to see bigger blocks of script, and if I increase its size, it takes up too much of the screen real-estate that I need for actually designing my form. So I end up continuously making it bigger and smaller depending on what I’m doing. Very irritating.

Here’s a simple way around this.

Firstly, set up a keyboard shortcut to toggle the Script Editor visibility. Use the Tools/Keyboard Shortcuts… menu, select Product Area = Window, find the Script Editor command. Then click in the “New Shortcut” field, press F4 (or your shortcut of choice), and click Assign.

Then re-arrange your Script Editor to suite your needs. My favourite is detached from the main window (or undocked), and fairly large, as shown below:

There is a bit of a trick to get this right, because as soon as you make the Script Editor a bit large, it will try to dock whenever you move it. So…

• To undock it, double click on the move bar of the Script Editor. (The move bar will appear either at the top or left of the Script Editor, depending where it’s docked.)
• Then reposition the Script Editor, NOT by moving it, but rather by resizing both the top left and bottom right corners. Resizing won’t cause the Editor to dock, whereas even the slightest movement can.

From this point on, a single F4 keypress will toggle the Script Editor on and off, and I always have the script editor just where I need it when I need it.

Many thanks to Stefan Cameron for this trick.