IDA’s MS-DOS heritage remains evident to this day. Regardless of the interface (text or GUI) that you happen to be using, IDA makes extensive use of hotkeys. While this is not necessarily a bad thing, it can yield unexpected results if you believe that you are in a text-entry mode and find that nearly every keystroke leads IDA to perform some hotkey action. For example, this can happen while using the GUI if you position the cursor to make a change and are expecting that anything you type will appear at the cursor location (IDA is not your mother’s word processor).

From a data-entry perspective, IDA accepts virtually all of its input via dialogs, so if you are attempting to enter any data at all into IDA, do make sure you see a dialog in which to enter that data. The one exception is IDA’s hex-editing feature, which is only available via the Hex View window.

A final point worth remembering is this: There is no undo in IDA! If you inadvertently press a key that happens to initiate a hotkey action, do not waste any time searching for an undo feature within IDA’s menu system—you will not find one. Nor will you find a command history list to help you determine what it was you just did.