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In InDesign, I often want to quckly Ctrl+Tab back and forth between two documents side-by-side (using, of course, Ctrl+Shift+Tab to go the other way). But I might have four documents open, in total. I carefully place the two documents I want to constantly compare, next to each other, but when I Ctrl+Tab it doesn't seem to make a difference and InDesign seems to cycle it in order of 'last used' anyway.

Like you can customise with browsers (or at least via extensions), is there a setting to change it so that it's ALWAYS cycling in order of tabs and not 'last used'?

Edit: I've included the Photoshop tag, as I do seem to reember experiencing it in Photoshop also, but I have opened ID and PS fresh sessions and can't seem to be able to reproduce the issue at first. I think the 'last used' phemononen kicks in once you've done some work across the documents, so for now I'll keep the PS tag in as is.


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migrated from graphicdesign.stackexchange.com Aug 20 '13 at 2:14


I believe that is an OS shortcut, not an Adobe shortcut. –  Scott Aug 19 '13 at 7:18
@Scott I wonder if Cmd+Tab (or however you tab through browser tabs on a mac) works in InDesign? (I have a retina macbook pro but mostly use Windows on it...) If so - and either way - it's still something browsers can customise (on both mac and win), so my question is not so much how to customise the 'shortcut' itself, but 'how tabs are cycled' with the appropriate input commands, if you know what I mean. (Where, perhaps some other method can do the same thing, aside from Ctrl+Tab'ing.) –  foregon Aug 19 '13 at 10:51
Command-Tab/Command-Shift-Tab cycles in the Mac OS. And it's always last used windows, so the same thing you explain happens in the Mac OS. I don't think there's any way to control it other than to alternate between Command-Tab, then Command-Shift-Tab, then Command-Tab to move back and forth between 2 windows when many windows are open. –  Scott Aug 19 '13 at 11:31
The issue is, it's a big hassle to set the keyboard shortcuts up such that Ctrl/Cmd+Tab and Ctrl/Cmd+Shift+Tab are doing it in the right order. It always seems to be in the reverse, or you forget 'which order' it's in - when all you want is the order that they visually are in the tabs. –  foregon Aug 20 '13 at 1:45

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