i heart keyboard shortcuts
Using my mouse is an annoying waste of time. Moving my hand half a foot from the keyboard is bad enough, but the time it takes to locate the pointer on the screen is what really steams me. Oh yeah, most of the time it’s a split second and there it is, but every now and then the pointer is right at the edge of the screen and my flailing of the mouse just slides it along that edge. Precious seconds are wasted trying to find that stupid thing!
This is why keyboard shortcuts rule like Dr. Doom rules Latveria*.
Some of them everybody knows. They’re fine. Some of them are pretty freaking useless. And some… ahhhh, some are like hidden jewels.
So, in the interest of introducing my favourites in case they are new to you, may I obsequiously present…
Jason’s Jolly Pirate Ship ‘o’ Window-Centric Keyboard Shortcuts
General Windows Shortcuts
These are the ones that everyone should know and if you don’t, what’s your problem, chump? They work in a whole cornucopia of Windows programs.
CTRL-o— OpenCTRL-s— SaveCTRL-a— Select AllCTRL-x— CutCTRL-c— CopyCTRL-v— PasteCTRL-f— FindCTRL-p— PrintCTRL-F4— Close fileALT-F4— Close ProgramALT-Tab— Cycle through open windowsWIN-e— Open Windows ExplorerWIN-d— Minimize everything and reveal the desktop (hit it again and it restores everything)
Microsoft Word
F4— Repeat Last Action (This one is so sweet. Select some text. Do something to it. Select some other text. Hit F4. It performs the last action on the new selection. Makes life so much easier, especially when some of those actions involve going through a whole series of menus.)F12— Save As
Thunderbird (and a lot of other email programs)
CTRL-Enter— Send EmailCTRL-r— ReplySHIFT-CTRL-r— Reply AllCTRL-l— Forward
Mozilla Firefox
CTRL-l— Go to the Location barCTRL-k— Go to the Search BarCTRL-n— Open new browser windowCTRL-t— Open new tabCTRL-Tab— Cycle through open tabs- Keywords — This is not so much a specific keyboard shortcut as a way to create keyboard shortcuts for specific web addresses. Select “Properties” for any specific bookmark and in the keyword field enter whatever keyword you like. I find it easiest to use single-letter keywords for the sites that I visit most often (”j” for this site, “b” for Bloglines, etc.). That way, I just type CTRL-l and then the single letter keyword and then I’m at the page I’m looking for. Easy-peasy.
* Geek quota of the day
UPDATE: Ack! I forgot one of the very most essential of the keyboard shortcuts:
CTRL-z— Undo!!!!
(Don’t know where I’d be without that one…)
September 29th, 2005 at 6:08 pm
F-7! Spellcheck. A must for the non-hardcore! (Who cannot be content with teh hackerz-norml levl of typez).
September 30th, 2005 at 9:58 am
Bah! I spit on you’re spell chek!
Of course, the SHIFT-F7 Thesaurus in Word is superlative / unparalleled / unrivaled / consumate / and all those other neat words.
September 30th, 2005 at 2:43 pm
To go with your Ctrl+Z, there’s Redo, which is either Ctrl+Shift+Z or Ctrl+Y. This sometimes means it will redo something you’ve undone, or repeat an action.
September 30th, 2005 at 2:45 pm
Yup, yet another that I use a lot.
See? SEE? Keyboard shortcuts kick my ass ever time with coolness.
October 7th, 2005 at 12:11 am
Is this you?
I like typing in just the domain name in the address toolbar in IE (and other browsers) and hitting Ctrl-Enter.
April 11th, 2006 at 2:55 pm
Some great Firefox shortcuts:
If you have a number of tabs open, then pressing CTRL-1 will jump to the first tab, CTRL-2 to the second one, CTRL-7 to the seventh, etc.
CTRL-+ (plus) increases text size, CTRL– (minus) decreases it, CTRL-0 (zero) sets it to the default size.
CTRL-B shows bookmarks, CTRL-H shows history
You can find loads more here.
April 11th, 2006 at 3:00 pm
I do love those font-size ones. I will definitely start using the ctrl-[number] one. Thanks!
April 25th, 2006 at 1:46 pm
Know one for making a bullet in PowerPoint?
April 25th, 2006 at 2:01 pm
No, as far as I can find there isn’t one and Powerpoint doesn’t come with the feature to create your own shortcuts.
However, there are add-ins you can add to Powerpoint to allow you to create your own shortcuts.
April 10th, 2007 at 7:16 pm
This shortcuts are very help full for the ‘keyboard loving user’ like me. This shows the many shortcuts that are very important to the keyboard user.
But i have one more:
To highlight a word or sentence(s)-Simply hold [shift] and press [direction of the letter; either left or right]
Continue pressing this until you have highlighted every letter you want to.
And also to type a higher case letter-just hold [shift] and press the letter.
THANK U for your time!!!!
August 26th, 2007 at 1:49 pm
you are very clear and helpfull. I have to thank you so much. I worked for a web sites company for 3 months and they were using the shortcut ALT-Tab like crazy. I am in this field too and I was embrace to ask them how they could do it. Now I know!! Thank you.
February 16th, 2008 at 3:12 pm
Ctrl + F enables u to find any word on the page.
I find that extremely helpful!!=]]
February 18th, 2008 at 6:53 am
while i was going through the shortcut for the horizontal scrolling shortcut which said either do shift or ctrl or alt + scrolling, i found out that shift + scroll up does the forward and shift+scroll down does backward
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May 2nd, 2008 at 8:10 am
Re so_u_think_u_smart Says
“But i have one more:
To highlight a word or sentence(s)-Simply hold [shift] and press [direction of the letter; either left or right]
Continue pressing this until you have highlighted every letter you want to.
And also to type a higher case letter-just hold [shift] and press the letter.”
Re your first point if you hold down ctrl and shift and then the left right arrows when highlighting, a single stroke of left or right will highlight the next whole word!!!!!!!!
Re your second point about changing letter cases in word and some other programs, if you need to to capitalize / uncapitalize several letter in the same word at once you can……
Hight light the letters to be changed
Hit alt then O then e and hit return it will change all selected characters to upper or lower case!