Audacity Forum

I've just started using the Label Track facility and find I can't use the lower case character z in label names. Is this a known limitation (a.k.a. feature ) or have I discovered a bug?

Yes, this is a known bug.

In the edit -> preferences -> keyboard menu there is a listing of each keyboard shortcut. You can also change these shortcuts. Look for "Find Zero Crossing". You'll note that it's initially set to "z". This is the problem so I'll tell you how to fix it.

Click on that "z". Towards the bottom of the menu, a dialog box will now have a "z" in it. In that dialog box, erase the "z" and press [ctrl]+z. Then click "Set".

You've now changed the keyboard shortcut for "Find Zero Crossing" to [ctrl]+z, and you'll be able to put a 'z' in your labels without any trouble.

You can substitute [ctrl]+z for anything else, but don't use a regular letter or you'll just push the problem off on another letter. Use something you wouldn't normally type while entering text.

Thanks for that, alatham, I've made the change as you suggest. What puzzled me was that I could use upper case Z, changing to lower case in the filename and track title in Properties with Windows Explorer.

As an retired ex-mainframe developer, I often wonder what did we do before we had computers to amuse us.

Yes, uppercase 'Z' works out of the box because Audacity wasn't recognizing [shift]+z as a shortcut for anything, so it was passing the keystroke on to whatever subroutine is used to handle text entry. But regular 'z' was being intercepted.