What does the Scroll Lock key do??

[ashishmishra]

I know this sounds stupid, I was just cleaning my keyboard, you know taking keys out and doing a through clean-up. So when I was popping the keys back in I just looked at the Scroll Lock key and was like WTH does this one do, tried it on and off in word but doesn't seem to make any difference, is it like one of those legacy keys or does it have a cool use that I never knew about??

Thanks for your answers

EDIT: Poll added, just to make me feel better that there might be others that don't know. Needless to say I'm sitting in the office bored as I have no work right now.

 

[bsobel]

It was primarily used when the display was simply a text console, it locked the screen from scrolling (erasing the top line, moving all other lines up, printing a new line at the bottom).

Bill

 

[ashishmishra]

So basically it is a legacy key right, not of any use anymore in current apps.

 

[alaricljs]

The only app I'm aware of that uses it is Excel. With scroll-lock on instead of moving around cell by cell with the arrow keys, you scroll the entire spreadsheet. Some KVM's have you double-tap scroll lock to initiate a port change.

 

[potato28]

Xfire uses scroll lock as defult for most ingame combos.

 

[ashishmishra]

Originally posted by: alaricljs
The only app I'm aware of that uses it is Excel. With scroll-lock on instead of moving around cell by cell with the arrow keys, you scroll the entire spreadsheet. Some KVM's have you double-tap scroll lock to initiate a port change.

alaricljs, thanks for the heads-up about Excel, I do a fair bit of spreadsheets and this sounds like something that'll come in handy there since I prefer keyboard shortcuts instead of mouse. Thats what I love about Anandtech Forums, you learn something from someone everyday :thumbsup:.