How do I ensure the CTRL, ALT or SHIFT keys are held down in a macro?

There are two methods that you can employ. They are listed below.

1. The first method is to use the CTRL, ALT and SHIFT Keys that can be accessed in the “Enter Keystrokes” field. By default, any key that follows is acted upon as if it were being held down.
   
   For example, if your macro contains <CONTROL>a, this is the same as holding down the CTRL key and pressing the “a” key. If your macro contained <CONTROL><ALT>a, then this would be the same as holding down the CTRL key and the ALT key at the same time and then pressing the “a” key. The same works with the SHIFT key.
   
   There are a couple things to keep in mind:
   
    – If you use an upper case letter (i.e. A), then you may not get the results you expect.
   
    – There are certain system keystroke commands that are built into the operating system at a low level such as CTRL+ALT+DELETE. Placing these commands in macros will not be recognized by Windows at this low level and will not work as intended.
   
   
2. The second method is to use the specific functions for “Alt Key Down”, “Alt Key Up”, “Ctrl Key Down”, etc. Here you would choose the macro command “Alt Key Down” and the following command would be a text command containing the letters you want to be associated with the ALT key. You would follow this with an “Alt Key Up” command. Again, make sure that you use lower case letters. The “WIN” key available on the Microsoft keyboards is also available for down and up usage.