I just took the plunge yesterday and installed Skyrim, and I still have a character in Obliv. that I was playing just before I bought Skyrim. I mention this only to report that I do know how to use the Hotkeys, usually. But so far I have had no luck getting the 1-8 keys to bind to anything. I go into the inventory, select/equip a weapon, and press the corresponding key, which is what my understanding of the Help instructions indicates. Obviously I'm not doing this correctly, I hope. Where can I go for better/more detailed instructions?

I assume youre on PC. Go into inventory, select a weapon, or whatever you want to hotkey. Look at the bottom of the screen, it will tell you which button to push to 'favourite' the item (its either f or r, ive remapped my keyboard so i cant remember which). Now push 'Q' to bring up the favourites menu. Hover over the item you want to bind to a key, and push the number you want to bind it to. Now youre in business!

Thanks, Aphaea, for such a quick response. I'll try your suggestion right now. I just re-mapped F to Favorites, and didn't have any luck, but I didn't know about the Q thing. Is there some menu that should come up for Favorites? I don't see one, so I guess the Q is for bringing it up.
BRB!

I forgot that I've re-mapped Q to Sneak. What is the function that previously was under Q? I can't seem to find anything in the Controls section that matches that. And, as before, no Menu from F is showing, if there is a Favorites Menu, I can't bring it up, and I'm still unable to map Hotkeys to anything.

EDIT: NVM, I see that Auto-move is the former Q, and I returned it to the Ctrl key where it belongs, dagnabit! hehehe. Well, obviously, since the other keys seem to be working properly, I'm doing something wrong. It shouldn't be this difficult to map Hotkeys, or at least I've never had this problem before in Fallout3/NV, Oblivion, etc.

I find Hotkeys keys terribly unintuitive in Skyrim. They were good in Morrowind, FO3 and even Oblivion, but I just can`t be bothered to use them here. I tried it once and it just didn`t do what I wanted- dropped it.

Thanks blade, I had no idea about that. The UI in Skyrim truly is a monumental disaster, I almost stopped playing the game due to how tedious the menu is, hopefully knowing there IS a way to bind number keys will make it slightly better, though your statements later on don't give me much hope.

I finally figured them out, as my problem was that, with an 8-button mouse, I'd re-mapped the various menus, so I had to do a trial and error to find which one was now Favorites. Hotkeys mapped accordingly, now. I agree with Blade watcher and Kovahrik, however, that the UI is nowhere near as good as Fallout3, Obliv., etc. are.

The beautiful landscapes do make up for a lot of shortcomings, that's for sure. heh.

Kovahrik, Aphaea was right in her instructions; after placing an item in Favorites, just open the Favorites menu, and click the number key as you highlight the chosen item/spell/etc. Again, I was having difficulty because I'd re-mapped the Q and F keys, as well as the Inventory and other Menu keys. Great good luck to you.

Never had a probem with the Hotkeys or how they worked, let's not turn this into another Skyrim > Oblivion > Morrowind thread yeah?

If you hit ESC, there's an option in the left bottom corner to reset the keys to default.

And you must make an item "favorite" before it shows up in the hot key menu.

You can also have more than 8 items in the hot key list, which helps if you want to change to something special, that isn't numbered.

My mage has quite a few spells that I bring up via the hot key list - that way you don't have to keep going back into your spell inventory.

Good luck.

PS: Correction to the above: to reset keys to default, press ESC, then select System, Controls, and then you'll see the "T" button in the left bottom corner to reset the keys to default.

Yeah, you have to add items/spells to the favourites menu in order to hotkey them. Kinda lame, but there you go.

It seems I spoke too soon, as I have had no luck in getting the Healing spell included in the Favorites menu.

NyanKhajitt, if you don't like the comparison, too bad.

Wait, you can hotkey things? Or is it just the stupid favorites menu?

Consoles have 2 hotkeys.. 2! In oblivion we had 8. F* my life.

You hotkey things IN the favorites menu. Make item Favorite -> Go to Favorites menu -> Hotkey item

Kiralyn2000 is right; my problems seem to arise because I forget that Skyrim has 2 functions embedded to certain keys. To hotkey an item, Click F to bring up the Favorites menu. To actually put an item into the Favorites inventory, click Z while in your Inventory menu screen ( If, like me, you've re-mapped those keys, the underlying Favorites functions remain with F/Z, I believe. If someone has contradicting info, please share.).

F is also used for another function, as is Z. I get it now, but it sure isn't intuitive.

EDIT:As Nevarine1138 mentions, the correct keys are Q and F. I did indeed re-map Q, as I use it for sneaking in all my Bethesda games. Sorry for the misinformation.

What happened to just hitting `F1` and choosing what you wnated to put in a slot?

Y`know changing something simply for the sake of change is not clever.

Changing something to make it better is the only reason for change.

You remapped your keys.

The default key to access the favorites menu is Q, and F favorites it in the inventory.

Also, this system is just as easy as Oblivion's to use, though it isn't as visually stunning (as visually stunning as a wheel was). Not sure what's so hard about bringing up a favorites menu to hotkey a spell/weapon.

I'm thrilled to death that you had no problem with Hotkeys. Really, I can't get over how happy I am for you.

Personally, I wish the Thalmor would take away all the Morrowind revivalists for 're-education'.