How to override the keyboard shortcuts in document editor

5 Apr 20224 minutes to read

Document editor triggers the keyDown event every time when any key is entered and provides an instance of DocumentEditorKeyDownEventArgs. You can use the isHandled property to override the keyboard shortcut behaviour.

Preventing default keyboard shortcut

The following code shows how to prevent the CTRL + C keyboard shortcut for copying selected content in document editor.

CSHTML

<ejs-documenteditor isReadOnly=false enableEditor=true enableSelection=true id="container"></ejs-documenteditor>

<script>
    var documenteditor;
    document.addEventListener('DOMContentLoaded', function () {
        documenteditor = document.getElementById("container").ej2_instances[0];
        documentEditor.keyDown = function (args) {
            var keyCode = args.event.which || args.event.keyCode;
            var isCtrlKey = (args.event.ctrlKey || args.event.metaKey) ? true : ((keyCode === 17) ? true : false);
            //67 is the character code for 'C'
            if (isCtrlKey && keyCode === 67) {
                //To prevent copy operation set isHandled to true
                args.isHandled = true;
            }
        }
    });
</script>

Override or define the keyboard shortcut

Override or define a new keyboard shortcut behaviour instead of preventing the keyboard shortcut.

For example, Ctrl + S keyboard shortcut saves the document in SFDT format by default, and there is no behaviour for Ctrl + Alt + S. The following code demonstrates how to override the Ctrl + S shortcut to save a document in DOCX format and define Ctrl + Alt + S to save the document in SFDT format.

CSHTML

<ejs-documenteditor isReadOnly=false enableEditor=true enableSelection=true enableWordExport=true enableSfdtExport=true id="container"></ejs-documenteditor>

<script>
    var documenteditor;
    document.addEventListener('DOMContentLoaded', function () {
        documenteditor = document.getElementById("container").ej2_instances[0];
        documentEditor.keyDown = function (args) {
            var keyCode = args.event.which || args.event.keyCode;

            var isCtrlKey = (args.event.ctrlKey || args.event.metaKey) ? true : ((keyCode === 17) ? true : false);

            var isAltKey = args.event.altKey ? args.event.altKey : ((keyCode === 18) ? true : false);

            // 83 is the character code for 'S'
            if (isCtrlKey && !isAltKey && keyCode === 83) {
                //To prevent default save operation, set the isHandled property to true
                args.isHandled = true;
                documentEditor.save('sample', 'Docx');
                args.event.preventDefault();
            } else if (isCtrlKey && isAltKey && keyCode === 83) {
                documentEditor.save('sample', 'Sfdt');
            }
        }
    });
</script>