SAP –Tips & Tricks - GO Learn SAP

Everyone wants to know the easy way to do things. Often people tell me after one of my courses, “I wish I knew that 2 years ago, it would have saved my tons of time and frustration!” On one of my many business trips, chatting with the man in the seat next to me, we discussed what we do for work. He was a planner and when he found out I am an SAP Educator, he said, “I have to use SAP, it is so complex, 5 clicks to get a darn PO number from a work order!” I of course told him it is only one click, the Document Flow icon on the Order Header .
He responded, “why did they not teach me that?” I replied that they need to change their approach, teach the easy way first then the detailed methods later, there often is an easy way.

Key Concept

This blog will address a bunch of keyboard shortcuts and tips and tricks to hopefully make you a more efficient and happier SAP user. I realize this list is not all there is, but just the ones I think are most important. Feel free to reach out if you feel I missed a critical tip or trick that you cannot live without that I should also share with others.

Tips for SAP Users;

Top left corner; useful to stop a transaction that is taking too long, many users are only taught the icon to create a new session, but that will not work if the session is “busy” where the top left corner method will.
to create SAP shortcuts, specify the desired location such as your Desktop, or select Logon Panel or browse to locate a folder where you want to store your shortcuts. If you specify logon panel, they will list as below;
You can set your SAP start transaction, in case you prefer to always start from a specific screen, such as my favorite, ih01; Menu Path; Extras > set start transaction (this sets the standard logon default start screen)
or Gears Icon in the new GUI; This allows you to set your Options; I often recommend companies to leave their production client as is, but to change their “training” or “sandbox” client to green, so you know which client you are in more than just by the status bar info. Many users who have access to Production and a Testing or Training client, make drastic errors, such as “playing in Production” or doing “real” work in the “Training” client and only realizing later that you wasted all that time. I know one admin who ordered a lot of materials for the crews and got all upset at supply chain weeks later when the materials still did not arrive. We found that she had ordered in the “Training” client. Another Master Data admin I know created lots of maintenance plans and realized later it was all done in the “training” client. So, Set Color in System to Green for Sandbox, perhaps a different color for Quality Assurance client, and if you have access to DEV, make the color really stand out! If you do not select the sub-selection “in system”, you will set all the clients you have access the same color. Another suggestion is to turn off SAP sound (I find the beep on errors or warnings annoying); Interaction Design > Sound Settings to disable sound.…
Command Field on the top Menu Bar.
- The following are some commands you may find useful in SAP;
  Ctrl / will get you to this Command field from other fields
  Ctrl + will launch a new session
- /o (open new session ex. /oih01 will launch a new session to ih01)
- /n (exit session, can open a new one as well /nih01)
- /nex (exit SAP, same as menu System > Log off)
I call this next tip the “00 trick”, great to control the enormous SAP Menu. The first two letters of many tcodes does have meaning, like IW is “workflow”, so if you type iw00, it changes the SAP Menu to only show workflow related transactions. This works with most tcode groups, iw00 will list all work flow transactions (Notifications, Orders, Time Confirmations) ip00 will lists all Preventative Maintenance tcodes, mm00, mb00 all very useful when you are do not remember a tcode and don’t have your favorites. You can toggle the SAP menu back with . I was once asked on a phone interview the common question, “what is the tcode to schedule a maintenance plan?” many people think good consultants memorize all the tcodes, I answered by explaining how as an instructor, I do not teach memorizing tcodes, I teach enabling skills, ip00 will list all the Planning and Scheduling tcodes, the interviewer was also a senior PM Consultant, and he admitted he did not know that trick. I got the contract. I also teach how tcode endings have meaning, such as iw21, iw31 etc. the 1 refers to “create”, 2 = change, 3 = display, 8 = list in change mode, 9 = list in display mode (another bonus tip – you can toggle most lists with the pencil icon, and if you just created something, just use the menu to toggle to change that object, instead of returning to the main menu)
Error Logs; Type “/nsu53” in Command Field then [Enter] to Display Authorization Data, you can capture the error log, often I would attach to a help ticket to SAP IT to resolve the authorization issue or bug.
Tcode to search Menu = “Search_SAP_Menu”, this can be useful to see what transaction refer to a keyword of interest, such as “project”, it will list all transactions containing that word. Many people also use Google, and we often provide a list of all tcodes with descriptions as to what the transaction does, what role has access and other useful tips. Let me know if you want a list of all the SAP PM Tcodes.
Execute Search with [F8]; When I teach SAP, even new users, I teach users to use the function key [F8] to execute a screen or search. Some users even put a little note above the key “execute” or “DO IT”. The Clock icon is gone in S4 HANA, so best to start using [F8] now. S4 HANA has a button on bottom right corner labelled “Execute”, which I find awkward since I was so use to clicking the Clock Icon on the top left, so now I really prefer [F8], and it is more efficient after typing a search pattern to just hit the function key rather than trying to find your mouse and clicking buttons. I find many new users get “button-itis” as in they have so many Icon buttons to learn, they often click the wrong one initially. Also, I have met some users who are so fast on the keyboard, they want to learn all keyboard methods, a few users I know are blind and they get around faster than me!
UNDO; The Opps keys, ctrl -z to undo text changes, works in SAP as well, even though there is no icon. I always teach ctrl-z over the use of icons in WORD or EXCEL, since it is quicker and there is no undo icon when you accidentally delete a file on your desktop, so ctrl-z is empowering. Many SAP users do not know this is possible in SAP as well.
Select region of text is possible in SAP. Use ctrl-y to activate region selection cross, then select the desired region by click and drag, then copy with ctrl-c, finally paste in desired location with ctrl-v (or clipboard icon if available in SAP) Planners love this skill! They can copy data from orders to orders or to task lists or Bills of Materials as well as data from SAP to external apps like emails or Excel. Bonus tip, it works both ways, you can select regions of text in PDFs via ALT-Drag to select a region in a PDF.
[Esc] to cancel out of screens, useful if you have drilled down many levels, it is a quick method to back out, but be careful not to back out of something you have not saved.
[Enter] key can be used to acknowledge SAP status bar warnings, very useful when you have a lot of repeat warnings, we sometimes lean a stapler on the [Enter] key !
“The equal trick”, example; in the vendor field, try =ack* then [Enter] executes a search from within field. This works if the key field is a match, some companies make it work for EQUIPMENT field, they make the key field the “sort field” which is their legacy Equipment Tag. Try it with the Vendor field;
The Status bar is more useful than many users know.
User name (sometimes not so obvious, useful to help users create their user default variants U_Username)
Transaction (useful as default, so screen captures or training videos show what tcode the screen actually is). Transaction speed (useful to track the time a transaction takes to complete for reporting to IT that something is wrong or just to know)
F1 is help in most software, and in Sap fields, also gets you to be able to get Technical info (if Parameter ID exists for field for System > User Profile > Own Data PID defaults, also what table field is in, etc.)
Document Flow icon on the Order Header and elsewhere. In Order headers, it will list all associated documents, requisitions, Purchase Orders, Time confirmations as well as let you drill into these documents for more detail.Please comment which of these were new to you and you think it will be useful to you.