Shortcut for Dictionary does not work

Just out of curiosity, can you right click and look something up in Dictionary?

Do you have that key command set for another function in the keyboard system preferences? You might check the keyboard system preferences to ensure the dictionary lookup shortcut is checked and enabled.

Message was edited by: Topher Kessler

Not that this will help, but I can confirm that it works properly for me.

You might try creating a new user, just to see if it's system wide or just an issue with your user account...

At least that may help get you closer to finding a solution.

Just so you know it's not you, I have the same problem with the dictionary. Works fine invoked directly from the services menu. I know it used to work at some point in the past - I'm on 10.5.3 now. I discovered it while trying to figure out a different keyboard shortcut problem, which is that firefox 3 does not honor any keyboard shortcuts I set up. That's particularly annoying because they worked in FF2.

But spot-checking a few others, most of them work. I had first figured it was likely firefox to blame, but after finding the dictionary shortcut not working, it feels more like an OSX regression.

Are you sure that is the correct default? I have not changed mine that I recall, and it is set to Control-Shift-D, which works fine in Safari and TextEdit. Firefox 3 ignores the shortcut however.
Francine


Francine
Schwieder

Just checked, evidently I did muck about with the short-cut, though I can't remember why or when: my test user, where I have done only minimal intrusions to the way Apple makes it, does indeed show Control-Command-D, which works in Safari and TextEdit, but not in Firefox. So for me the custom Control-Shift-D works in my regular user, and Control-Command-D works in my test user for supported apps (which at guess are Apple apps that do text in some form), and neither works in Firefox3. Do you see any entries appear in the Console log when you attempt to use the shortcut?
Francine


Francine
Schwieder

Just to clear: Are you using the shortcut properly? It does not work like most shortcuts. There are two ways to use it: Point the mouse at a word; hit command-control-D; a pop-up should appear with the definition. No mouse click.

Or, hit command-control-D and hold the command and control keys. Now the pop-up should appear for any word you point at, as long as you hold the cmd & cntl keys. Again, no clicking. Just point.

Do you have any third-party enhancement software installed, such as utilities that might run in the menubar or anything else?