thanks in advance for your time and help and my best wishes for xmas and the new year.
Page 228 of the the excellent manual (also available through the in-app Help) lists the relevant shortcuts and I suspect you may be looking for Control-Tab.
Stephen
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It’s very nice to have a celebrity answer my post. Very kind of you.
I had looked at the manual - Ctrl Tab should. be the solution as shown below, but I think that there is a bug: if you select a group in the sidebar and press Ctrl Tab, all it does is to select/deselect that group instead of navigating to the item list etc. It seems that it may be a bug (@BLUEFROG , @cgrunenberg could explain)
I am blocked in a Keyboard Maestro macro because I can’t find a way to navigate to top of the item list.
thanks again very much
What happens if you press Ctrl-Tab and then press the space bar?
Stephen (definitely not a celebrity!)
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Do you have an item also showing in the View/Edit pane? If not, make sure one is showing there and try again.
Stephen
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yes, many. I finally solved my problem using the Keyboard Maestro click at found image action which is certainly not great (as in reliable). thank you
It sounds as though we were at cross-purposes and perhaps not using the same names for the DEVONthink windows. I thought (following the names of the DEVONthink windows on page 82ff in the manual):
- your cursor was in the sidebar hlghlighting some item there;
- you wanted, using a keyboard shortcut, to highlight an item in the Item List.
I can do that following the steps I outlined previously. However, I’m confused about exactly what you wished to highlight and where it is. I’m not sure you can have "many” items showing in the Vew/Edit pane. I just wanted to check, without causing offence, that you’re not confusing the Item List with the View/Edit pane. (Of course, it’s perfectly possible I’m getting confused somewhere! 
)
Edit: Perhaps a screenshot of your DEVONthink layout would help.
Stephen
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Please note that I only use one database, the global inbox and its groups and subgroups (because replicants are so important for me).
thank you
Have you enabled Keyboard navigation in Preferences > General > Interface > Sidebar? If not, Ctrl-Tab only cycles between the item list, view pane and inspector.
(See p. 165 of the manual, Preferences > General > Interface)
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yes, it is checked. I tried uncheck→ re-check, but same problem.
thank you for your suggestion
If you mean that all your groups and sub-groups are created within the Global Inbox then I suspect that may be a rather unorthodox approach and it may possibly be why there appear, for you, to be some oddities of keyboard navigation. However as my databases are not organised in the same way I’m afraid I have to leave it to someone more expert to provide a considered view: sorry!
Stephen
4 Likes
Yes, that is correct. I am EXTREMELY grateful for all the time and effort you have put into this irritant. I wish you happy holidays !
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Do your arrow keys work for navigating the Sidebar and Item list?
Note: If you don’t already have an item selected in the item list, moving focus to it with Ctrl-Tab gives no visual feedback to show it now has focus. You have to make a selection. ↓ selects the first item in the list, ↑ selects the last item. Or you can type a letter to select the first item starting with that letter.
If you already have a selection in the item list, the selection color should change from grey to the accent color set in the macOS System Settings.
Otherwise this is getting pretty strange. Do you have some weird setup in a tool like Karabiner? I don’t have Keyboard Maestro, so I’m not sure if anything from KM could interfere.
@Stephen_C While I don’t use the Global Inbox as my only database, mine currently houses many groups (needs some cleaning 
). This makes no difference to keyboard navigation.
That’s good to know, thanks.
Stephen
that is the solution. I was expecting to type ⌃⇥ and automatically select the 1st item in the item list. Many many thanks for your insight @troejgaard .
I am an idiot and would like to express my profuse apologies to @troejgaard and @Stephen_C for all the time you wasted on my problem I am very sorry.
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Control-Option-Command-V == Go > Go to View. Then arrow key or type the first few letters of an item name.
This command allows you to jump to the various panes directly. Control (and Shift-Control) - Tab moves through panes progressively and is therefore dependent on what pane is currently active.
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thank you very much and my best wishes for the holidays
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Enjoy the rest of the year and holiday season!
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No need to apologize! I’m glad we got it figured out 
I guess this behaviour is not obvious if you’re not aware.
But yes, ⌃⇥ only moves focus, nothing else. One benefit of this behaviour is that it lowers the chance to unintentionally override what is shown in the View/Edit Pane – since selecting a document in the Item List immediately opens it there.
@Bluefrog I forgot there were individual commands to move focus to different panes. Since Ctrl-Tab / Ctrl-Shift-Tab works fine for me, I deemed it unnecessary to learn separate shortcuts 
It could of course be useful for KM macros and such.
The behaviour is the same, though: If there is no selection in the Item List already, there is no visual indication that the focus moved there. (At least you know you issued a specific command, but @rufus123 might well have experienced the same issue.)
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