Alt key shortcut woes in InDesign CS6

Greetings,

Our company recently switched from Macs to PCs for design work. Now all of the keyboard shortcuts that had been assigned on the Mac and started with the Option key (e.g., Opt + numeric keypad 1) have switched to the Alt key on the PC (e.g., Alt + numeric keypad 1) and no longer work. All of the shortcuts that use Alt in combination with the Control or Shift keys along with a number from the numeric keypad work as expected. The cause apparently is tied to the Windows OS, which uses the Alt key to shift focus to application menus.

My question is, has anyone found a straight-forward solution or workaround to this issue? Our designers count on those keyboard shortcuts to apply Paragraph, Character and Object styles. Having to revert to selecting from a palette rather than invoking the keyboard shortcut is truly costly in terms of time--a problem exacerbated by tight production deadlines. We have used all of the shortcut options that involve the shift and control keys, so switching the Alt key shortcuts isn't a legitimate option. We've look at using something like Auto Hotkey but have not successfully implemented that, and would prefer not to have to rely on that as a solution in the first place.

Any assistance will be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

Kevin