To Import the shortcuts text file, just go into the File menu and Import. In Windows, FreeHand has a funny way of placing this particular text file. Some reports have mentioned that it's because of the length. Anyway, above is what you'll get when you place the file. Three stacked text boxes that contain all of the shortcuts you'll be formatting.

Now we're going to clean this up. First select all the text boxes and Cut them into the clipboard.

Create a small empty text box. While the text cursor is active, Paste in the contents. It's best that the text box is not auto expanding, other wise you'll be faced with all kinds of memory issues.

This text box is what we'll be working on when styling the text. But first we must clean up the text a little bit more. Notice that there are strange gaps in the text. These are not tabs, and in fact it's just white space or a bunch of spaces.

We need to turn that white space into actual tabs to work with later.

Under the Edit menu -> Find & Replace -> Text, you should the dialog shown above. We want to use the Special pull-down menus to select and replace that White space with a Tab. Just choose those options (or use the special characters shown in the example above). Turn off Show selection option and hit the Find First button.

After that, click Change all and it will clean up that text in a flash.

If you want to skip the next Mac part and start formatting your text, click here. Or you can read it and find out some other Find & Replace techniques, because the Mac text file is quite different.

To Import the shortcuts text file, just go into the File menu and Import. Now to place it, just click-drag out a nice and small text area. No need to set the text box to auto expand, you'll be laying the whole thing out later. We just need to see a little bit of it for now.

Note: Sometimes the header will show a different name of shortcuts that what you really did export. Just remember to check it and make any necessary changes.

Next is time to clean this up. It's a bit more complicated on the Mac, because there are in fact Tabs already placed in the text and multiple carriage returns. I guess it really depends on how you want to format the text, but this next method works well for my needs.

Under the Edit menu -> Find & Replace -> Text, you should the dialog shown above. We want to use the Special pull-down menus to select and replace that certain groups of special characters with a Tab. In this case, we want to replace a Paragraph break and a Tab, with just one Tab. Just choose those options (or use the special characters shown in the example above). Turn off Show selection option and hit the Find First button.

After that, click Change all and it will clean up that text in a flash. The text should now look something like below. But I still don't like the double spacing of the text, so we'll now get rid of that.

To remove the extra Paragraph breaks, just use two Paragraph special characters for the Find field, and use one special character for the Change to field like shown above.

Repeat the same "Find First - Change all" routine and you are now ready to start formatting the text. Whew....

Bring into view a blank page. Make this page the exact size you want to be printing these shortcuts on. Then layout some guides that may represent the printer's margins.

Select and Copy a few lines of text from those imported shortcuts. Then Paste them onto the page.

Resize the text box so that it fits within the guides horizontally, like shown above.

We will be using this text box as a basis for setting up the final text Style. Just enough lines of text to see how it will all fit. This way, we won't actually be messing around with that other text since it is very long and may give you memory errors when working with it.

With the text box selected, you will be applying several text attributes. Once this is finished, we will then create a Style based on this these attributes, then add the finishing touches.

First select a Font face and size that would look the best. Above I chose 9 pt. Arial.

Now with the Text tool, select all the text in the text box. Make sure in your View menu you turn on the option Text Rulers. Now set a Left align tab in the approximate place I have above. Then set a Wrapping tab near the right of the Text Ruler. You'll notice that the Description text will wrap naturally when it hits the right side of the text box.

The placement of these tabs is not entirely important at this point, because when you view the entire list of shortcuts, you may need to adjust them accordingly to your needs. Keep the text selected.

Double-Click on the Left align tab and it will show the Edit Tab dialog shown above. Select a Leader for this tab such as the line of dots. Click OK. You should see the leader dots appear between the command and the shortcut.

Now we'll be applying some Paragraph attributes. It is no longer necessary to keep the text selected. Just deselect the text, but now, select the Text box itself.

With the Text box selected, go into the Text Inspector and choose the Paragraph button shown above.

Apply 5 pt. spacing below the paragraph. Then choose Paragraph Rules near the bottom of the Inspector.

Next, in the Rules pull-down menu, choose Edit. In this dialog box, enter 100% and choose the Column option.

While the Text box is still selected, choose the Stroke inspector. Pick the Basic stroke option and give enter .5 pt for the width.

Then in the Information inspector, turn off the Display border option at the bottom.

Your text should now be formatted to look like mine shown above. The paragraph rules were added to help separate each item. You can choose to change the color of the rules in the Stroke inspector later if you prefer.

Keeping the Text box selected, bring your Styles palette into view. Under the Options pull-down, select the New option. This will create a new Style in the list that is based on the text you have selected.

You can name this new Style to anything you prefer. After this has been done, it is now save to delete that "working" Text box.

Now bring that original imported text box into view and select it. Then just click on the new Style and it will instantly be formatted with all the tabs and everything.

You may notice that the paragraph rules are missing, you don't need to worry about that yet.

Now going back to your blank page, create a large empty text box that fills the area within the guides. With Snap to Guides turned on, this should be pretty easy. In the Inspector palette, turn off the option Display border.

Now we want to duplicate this page so we have about 10 total pages. In FreeHand 9, you can use the Page tool to easily Option (Alt) +Click-drag the pages over like shown above.

You can also use the Document inspector palette to accomplish the same thing, in fact it may be faster.

Now the next thing you want to do is to link all of the text boxes together so it forms a continuous chain of text boxes. To do this, Click-drag out from the Text Overflow Box on the bottom right corner, and let go on top of the next text box like shown above.

Now you're set to paste in the formatted text.

Next, select the formatted shortcuts text box and Cut into the clipboard. Select the Text tool and click in the empty text box on the first page.

Then Paste. You should see all of your text roll right in on the other pages like above.

If you notice the filled circle in the last text box, then you need to add some more pages with empty text boxes. Then just link these to the chain of other text boxes.

Well you're nearly finished. Now it's time to zoom in on the shortcuts and see how the rest of the text looks.

Now bring back the Paragraph rules by using the Stroke inspector like you did previously. Above I used a 30% Black .5 pt stroke for the rules.

Further inspection of the pages may reveal strange formatting when some columns of text don't quite match up like shown above. You can remedy this by editing the Style and changing the position of the first tab you created.

Just Option (Alt)+Click on the Style name and you will see the Style Editor shown above. You can change anything in that style here. What we want to focus on in this case is the Left aligned tab highlighted above. Just move it over to the right and click the OK button. You may need to adjust this several times until you get something you like.

After adjusting that tab, those lines of text should be fixed like shown above.

In Windows however, you may see something like shown above. The Windows version doesn't add the "No Shortcut" text, and instead just leaves a blank space.

To fix this, just add another tab in there manually, and it will push the description text over to the right like shown below.