We’ve covered how to access the Windows Vista Calendar using the keyboard, but what if you wanted to assign a single keystroke to pop up the calendar? Yeah, sure, you can just click it with the mouse, but where’s the geek fun in that?

In case you aren’t sure what we’re talking about, you can use Win+B, then Left, then Enter to pop up this calendar with the keyboard (or you can just click once on the clock). But we can get that down to a single keystroke with an AutoHotkey script.

Note: I came up with this idea after reading an article from Digital Inspiration about launching timedate.cpl with a shortcut.

Using the AutoHotkey Script

In order to use this script, you’ll need to have AutoHotkey installed. If you’d rather not do that, there’s a compiled version further down.

What we’ll do is assign the F12 key to send the keystrokes instead of having to do them manually. Create a new file named something.ahk and then paste in the following:

#InstallKeybdHook
#Persistent
#HotkeyInterval,100
SetKeyDelay, -1

f12::
{
send, {lwin down}b{lwin up}
sleep 10
send, {left}
sleep 10
send, {enter}
Return
}

Save the file, and now you can double-click on it to launch it.

At this point you can use the F12 key to pop open the calendar. If you want to close the script out, there’s an icon in the system tray.

Note: You can substitute another key instead of F12 if you want. You could also add #NoTrayIcon to keep it from putting an icon into the system tray.

Using the Compiled Application

I’ve included a compiled .exe version of the script in the download that you can run if you don’t have AutoHotkey installed. Just double-click on VistaCalendarHotkey.exe to run it.

Download VistaCalendarHotkey AutoHotkey Script/Application