MORE USEFUL TIP FOR MT4 USER
Use of the mouse and mousewheel, and their keyboard equivalents
Scrolling the chart
Hold down the left mouse button and drag the mouse in the main chart area, to scroll left/right.
Or you can also simply roll the mousewheel down/up, or use the left/right arrow keys, to likewise scroll the chart view left/right.
To scroll a whole screen at a time, use Page Up (scroll left) and Page Down (scroll right).
To reposition to the leftmost bar on the chart, press Home.To reposition to the most recent (rightmost) bar, press End.
To step forward one bar at a time, press F12.
To step backward one bar at a time, press Shift-F12.
Scrolling a chart beyond the leftmost bar will add historical bars to the beginning of the chart, until no more are available from MT4's historical database.
Moving directly to a certain date/time
To re-position immediately to a certain date, press Enter, then type in the date in the form DD.MM.YY and press Enter again. Leading zeros can be omitted (e.g. to move to 4 July 2005, type 4.7.5). To re-position to a certain date/time, use the format HH:MM or DD.MM.YY HH:MM (e.g. to position to 8:07am TODAY on a 1-min chart, simply type 8:7).
You can also use the "Fast Navigation Box" to change either the currency symbol, or the period, thus:
Code:
1. [time (hours:minutes)] example: 08:30; 8:30;
2. [date] example: 2004.10.16; 16.10.2004; 16.10.04;
3. [date and time] example: 2004.10.16 8:30; 16.10.2004 8:30; 16.10.04 8:30;
4. [symbol] example: GBPUSD; EURUSD;
5. [chart period] example: M1; M5; M15; M30; H1; H4; D1; W1; MN;
6. [symbol], [chart period] example: GBPUSD, M30; EURUSD, D1;
Vertical zoom and re-scale
You can re-scale the chart vertically by moving the mouse into the vertical axis area at the right of the screen, and then dragging downwards (with the left button held down) to compress the chart bars, or dragging upwards to expand them.
Double click to reset the chart to its original scale.
Horizontal zoom and re-scale
Similarly, you can adjust the width of the price bars by moving the mouse into the horizontal axis area at the bottom of the screen, and then dragging right (zoom in) or left (zoom out). Or simply use the "+" and "–" keys to achieve this.
Indicators
Double-click on or near indicators with the left mouse button, to call their parameter setup windows.
Right-click to call the indicator's context menu.
If the screen is cluttered with overlapping indicators and/or objects, making it too difficult to select the desired indicator, press Ctrl-I to call up the Indicators dialog window. Double click (or click the Edit button, or Alt-E) on the indicator to edit its properties (parameters, colors, etc), or click the Delete button (or Alt-D) to remove it from the chart.
You can use the Home, End and Page/arrow Up/Down keys to navigate up/down the list.
Objects
Double-click on or near an object (line studies, texts, arrows, geometric shapes) to select the object. Once selected, you can move an object by left clicking on it (or in the case of or trendline or shape, it's center handle) and dragging it to the desired destination. Shapes, trendlines, channels etc may be extended by dragging the handles on the relevant edges. The number "X/Y" appears, where "X" = the width of the shape in candles, and "Y" = the height of the shape in pips.
Right-click on a selected object to open its context menu.
If the screen is cluttered with overlapping indicators and/or objects, making it too difficult to select the desired object(s), press Ctrl-B to call up the Objects dialog window. Left click the check boxes on/off to select/deselect relevant object(s). Double click (or click the Edit button, or Alt-E) on an object to edit its properties (parameters, colors, etc), or click the Delete button (or Alt-D) to remove it from the chart. To quickly delete a whole block of objects, repeatedly press Alt-D or hold it down (careful, they disappear rather quickly!)
You can use the Home, End and Page/arrow Up/Down keys to navigate up/down the list.
Click on the 'Name' or 'Description' heading area to sort by name, or description, respectively.
Left-click to select an item. You can use Ctrl-click to add individual items to a selection, Shift-click to add a group of consecutive items, or press Ctrl-A to select all items. Then click the Edit button (or press Alt-E) to edit all items in the group consecutively, or the Delete button (or press Alt-D) to delete all selected items simultaneously (careful!).
Alternatively, from the chart window, press Backspace repeatedly to delete the most recently added object(s) on a last-added-first-removed basis (useful if you want to quickly check out a Fibo or regression channel, then remove it). Then press Ctrl-Z to undo any accidental deletes, in reverse order.
Or press the Delete key to remove ALL SELECTED objects.
Parallel Trendlines
Ctrl + left click on a selected trend line to draw a parallel trend line (create a channel). Can also be used with vertical and horizontal lines.
Duplicating objects [New: April 5,2008]
The 'Parallel Trendlines' concept extends to ALL objects (vertical, horizontal and trend lines; shapes - triangle, square, ellipse; text and labels; arrows and symbols; and studies like channels, Fibo, Gann, Pitchfork, etc). Here's how to duplicate any object:
-- Select the object by clicking on it**
-- While holding down the Ctrl key: move the mouse over any one of the object's handles, and, holding down the left button drag the mouse to where you want the duplicated object to be located
This shortcut also duplicates all of the proprties of the parent object, e.g. if you have red, green and blue objects, and you want to create a green one, simply duplicate it. This is quicker than creating a new object, and then changing its color to green.
** Object selection options
Press Ctrl-O and then select the 'Objects' tab.
-- "Select object by single mouse click" - if checked OFF, you must double click to select an object, and right click to modify its properties. If checked ON, single click to select an object, and double click to modify its properties.
-- "Select object after creation" - if checked ON, any object is automatically selected immediately after you create it.
-- "Show properties after creation" - if checked ON, the property modification window for the object is displayed, immediately after you create the object.
OR
Press Ctrl-B to display the objects list. Click on the checkbox (at left) for each object you want selected.
Information Bubble
Hover the mouse cursor on or over an element, object or indicator to see the prompt (help information bubble).
