Speed & productivity boosts. Once
you know how to type quickly and use keyboard shortcuts, you become faster than
almost any PC. It feels like an extension for your hand.
If you’re
interested, you can find a few tutorials for touch-typing (meaning you can type
without looking) here, here or here.
The second
part of the argument is keyboard shortcuts. Because each application has its
own shortcuts, this will be way too many to list in a TL/DR.
Some shortcuts are presented here for Windows Explorer, Internet Explorer, Word, Excel, Outlook & Windows Media Player.
Folder Navigation & Internet Browsing:
Alt + Left:
Back
Alt +
Right: Forward
Alt + Up: Up
Alt + D: activate
address bar, to type-in a new website without having to move to using the
mouse. Can also be used in usual folder navigation if you’re fast.
Windows +
E: Open My Computer Window
Windows +
R: Run dialog. Here you can run an application very quickly without having
to move your hand from the keyboard to mouse. Example: push Windows + R then
type “calc” to start windows calculator. The same goes for notepad, iexplorer, word,
excel and a lot more. Even this can be slimmed down to just pushing Windows to
open start menu and then typing in the application name.
Control +
Shift + N: Create New Folder.
Control +
Z: Undo
Control +
Y: Redo
Control +
X: Cut
Control +
V: Paste
Conrol + N:
Open new window (Internet or File browsing)
Control +
T: New tab (browsing)
Control +
Tab: move forward between tabs. This means from left to right
Control +
Shift + Tab: move backwards between tabs. This means from right to left.
Control +
W: Close tab or file or window, depending on what’s open.
Control +
Shift + P: Open new InPrivate/ Incognito/ Private browsing window.
Window Minimize/ Maximize/ Restore:
Windows +
Left: Put current window in the left half of the screen.
Windows +
Right: Put current window in the right half of the screen.
Using the 2
Tips above, you can have 2 windows side by side, which is quite useful if you
want to work on 2 Word files or spreadsheets at the same time.
Windows +
Down: Minimize current window.
Windows +
Number: Restore window in the first slot of the new taskbar.
This is new
to a lot of people so here is some explanation. Right beside your start menu
circular icon, you can see a few icons that are always there (typically
Internet Explorer & Windows Explorer), and you click them to launch the
application. Well, you can do that from the keyboard as well, by pushing the
Windows key and the number that matches the order of the icon. So, if the order
in my taskbar, starting from the left is Internet Explorer, Windows Explorer
then Windows Media Player, and you want to start Internet Explorer, just push
windows + 1. Neat, huh? After a while your hand will know what to do just as
soon as you think “browsing”.
Windows +
Shift + number: open a new window of an already open application. Continuing
with our example, if you want to open a new window of Internet Explorer besides
the one that you already have, you can push windows + Shift + 1.
To navigate
the internet explorer windows: push and hold windows key and push 1
repetitively till the window you want to maximize is selected.
All that
said, it’s a shame to use Internet Explorer. Get Opera, Firefox, Chrome or just
about anything else.
Windows
Media Player shortcuts:
Control +
P: Pause/ Play.
Control + F:
Next Track.
Control +
B: Previous Track.
F8: Volume
Down.
F9: Volume
Up.
Alt +
Enter: Full Screen/ Exit Full Screen. Also doable with double-clicking in
the middle of the video.
Word/
Excel/ Notepad/ Wordpad:
Control +
N: New document
Control +
S: Save
Control +
Shift + S: Save As
Control +
B/I/U: make selected text bold/italic/underlined. Meaning,
you have to select a bit of text first then you push Control + B/I/U.
While
on the subject of selecting text with keyboard only:
Control +
A: Select all.
Shift +
arrow key: select text from where the cursor is moving in the direction
specified.
Shift +
Control + arrow key: select a word.
Shift + end:
select the current line, if your cursor is at the start of the line. Shift +
home does the same if you’re at the end wanting to select all the way up to the
start.
The
copy/paste/ cut/ undo/ redo shortcuts work here as well.
Outlook:
Contol + N:
compose new email.
Control +
F: forward the selected email.
Control +
R: reply to the opened email.
Control +
Shift + R: reply-all to the opened email.
Control +
S: send the current email.
F9: Send/receive
emails.
My
suggestion: don’t be hard on yourself in the learning process. Start with the
first group or two only, then as you start using it without thinking, learn a
few more and so on. If you’re using other applications (and also those
discussed) you can definitely find info about that in their help files, or
just, Google.
Related Posts:
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- How to capture everything during a meeting or a training using free tools
- How to work with 2 Excel Files at the same time side by side
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