The Blog of Josh Stodola

Have you ever been typing up an email in Outlook and accidentally hit the Ctrl+Enter keyboard shortcut? This will send the email immediately in Outlook 2003. This happened to me the other day at work; I was pasting a screenshot into the email (I used Ctrl+V because I heart keyboard shortcuts) and I pressed the Enter key to go to the next line and continue to compose my message. But, since I type at the speed of light sound something fast, I had pressed enter before I completely let off the Ctrl key. The window just vanished, and the email was sent! Fortunately my life was not ruined, but it dawned on me how such a simple chain of events could turn out to be a major tragedy. Imagine if the email was very important, and you sent it prematurely. That could be very embarassing, it all depends. But the fact that it could be scared me a little, and so I looked for a solution.

The Ironclad Bulletproof Failsafe

A good way to side-step this potential problem completely is to compose the entire email before adding any contacts. The message obviously can't be sent if there are no recipients! Of course people easily get into habits, especially when it comes to software operational techniques. I always add the contacts first, so this isn't a good enough solution for me. I knew this "feature" of Outlook had to be disable-able. Sure enough, it is...

How to Disable Ctrl+Enter in Outlook 2003/XP/2000

In order to disable this feature entirely, you will have to modify the registry. For the noobs out there, you can get to the Windows Registry Editor by going to Start, Run, and typing regedit. Once you have it up and running, navigate the tree view on the left to the following destination...

Notice the version number in the path, and be aware this can vary...

• Office 2003 = 11.0
• Office XP = 10.0
• Office 2000 = 9.0

Right click on the "Outlook" folder in the tree view, and select "New -> Key", and name it "DisabledShortcutKeysCheckBoxes". Click on the key you just created in the tree view. Right-click in the window pane to the right and choose "New -> String Value" and name it "CtrlEnter"...

Double click on the string value you just created and set the data value to "13,8"...

Exit the Registry Editor and restart Outlook. Now the Ctrl + Enter shortcut should be disabled permanently. Thankfully in the newest version of Outlook (2007), this feature can be disabled within the program options.

How to Disable Ctrl+Enter in Outlook 2007

The setting is no longer embedded in the registry, so this is super simple! You could find it yourself if you looked hard enough, or you can just follow these steps...

1. Select "Tools -> Options" from the main menu in Outlook
2. Click the "E-mail Options..." button
3. Click the "Advanced E-mail Options..." button
4. Look at the checkbox at the bottom

There is another thing that was implemented nicely into Outlook 2007 if this feature is enabled; the first time you press Ctrl + Enter while composing a message, it will notify you of what is about to happen. That was nice of them, wasn't it? And of course, it gives you the option to never show that message again. Good job, Microsoft!

How to Disable Alt+S in Outlook 2003

But alas, there is another keyboard shortcut that can send the email! I have not figured out a way to disable this in Outlook 2007, but I know for a fact that it can be done in 2003. To do so, start by composing a new message and right-click anywhere on the toolbar and choose Customize...

Once you have the Customize window up, right click on the "Send" button...

Now simply remove the ampersand (&) from the "Name" field and close the Customize window...

If you've done any work with Windows Forms in Visual Studio, the ampersand thing should look familiar. That character is used to identify Alt + [Key] shortcuts in menus and buttons. And that's it! Finally, I can type another email without sweating bullets and carefully monitoring each keystroke.