Intellipoint: How to program Esc as a program-specific mouse button?

MS Intellipoint is programmed to abort the Key Assignment popup menu (in Program-specific settings) when an "Esc" keystroke is received from the keyboard. But "Esc" is what I want to record into its Key Assignment cell, and assign that to a particular mouse button. Every time I hit the keyboard Esc button when in that cell, the menu immediately closes without recording anything.

Esc is not part of Intellipoint's list of present commands you can select with a simple mouse click, so there's no alternative but to go to the Key... Keystroke Assignment popup menu to try to get it programmed in. I've tried entering the Ascii-equivalent Alt-027 from the numpad and Ctrl-[ alternatives in that cell, with no luck.

Anyone know of a prefix or alternative code that can be used to get the Esc signal recorded in the Key Assignment menu? Many thanks.

--Windows 7 64k, MS Wireless Intellimouse Explorer 2.0, Intellipoint 8.2 (IPx86_1033_8.20.468.0.exe)

I attempted the same thing but figured out a workaround. Assign a macro to the button, create a new macro and add a special key. Esc is available in the special key options.

Thanks coupland. I finally managed to wring that same information out of a support engineer on the Microsoft Answers forum (after disturbingly numerous off-target responses by multiple such engineers). The macro solution is working great. It's the "Insert Special" button in the macro menu.