Yesterday I discovered a situation wherein a keyboard ShortCut did not fire when I was expecting it to. The specific situation was: I pressed the ShortCut key combination for an Action of an ActionList on an MDI child, while a side bar on the MDI form was focussed. I always was under the impression that ShortCuts would work globally. In exactly which circumstances do or do they not fire? Answer When does a ShortCut fire? That's a deceptively simple question with a surprisingly long answer. First I will deal with some basics and then follow the ShortCut through the VCL code to finally arrive at - I hope - a satisfying conclusion. What is a ShortCut? A ShortCut represents a special keyboard combination of one or more keys that cause an operation. Special means special to the programmer who gives meaning to the specific key combination. In Delphi a ShortCut is of type TShortCut which is declared as a whole number wi...