Chuck The Geek.com

You have to learn these basic, essential keyboard shortcuts

January 23rd, 2006 by Chuck Sharp

If you use a Windows PC, you need to know these. It is far more efficient, not to mention better on your wrists, to not constantly be moving your hand from keyboard to mouse and vice-versa. Everyone should know and use these basic shortcuts as much as possible when at the computer. I will be posting more advanced shortcuts and helper program reviews shortly, but these are the critical ones for now.

Text editing

If you write any text on a computer, including email, word processing, or even data entry, these will help. They will work almost anytime you are in a text box (place where you edit text) or word processing window (such as MS Word).

Just to make things clear, when I refer to a keystroke combination like Shift + Right, I mean to hold down the Shift key, press the right arrow key, and then let go of the Shift key. Similarly, when I refer to Control-V, I mean to hold down the Control key (usually says “Ctrl” or “Ctl” on it), press the ‘V’ key, and then let go of the Control key.

Cursor Navigation:

• Use the Page Up and Page Down keys to display the page or screenful of text directly above or below the current one.
• Use Control + Home and Control + End to go to the beginning or end of the document or text.
• Use the arrow keys (up, down, left right) to move the cursor around the text.
• To move the cursor up or down an entire paragraph, hold down
  the Control (usually says “Ctrl” on the keyboard) and tap the up or down key.
• To move the cursor to the beginning of the word before the cursor or after the cursor, hold down the Control key and press the left or right key.

Selecting Text:

• Move the cursor to the beginning of where you want to start your text selection. Now, hold down either of the Shift keys while using the arrow keys (up, down, left, right) to select more text. When you’ve selected everything you want to, just stop moving the cursor and let up on the Shift key.
• You can use the Control key shortcuts mentioned above to select a larger amount of text at once. Shift + Control + Up or Down keys select from the cursor to the beginning or end of the paragraph, respectively. Shift + Control + Left or Right keys select from the cursor to the beginning of the current word or next word, respectively.
• To select the entire document, use Control + A.

Cutting, Copying, and Pasting Selected Text:

• Once you have text selected that you want to cut and paste, you can use Control + X to ‘cut’ the text into the clipboard. This is the same as going to the Edit menu and selecting the Cut option.
• If you want to copy the text but not cut it out of the text, use Control + C to copy it to the clipboard.
• After cutting or copying selected text, position your cursor where you want to paste the text, and then use Control + V to paste the selection there.

Undo the last editing action:

• Instead of going to the Edit menu to undo a mistake, you can press Control + Z as a shortcut. This shortcut prevents heart attacks.

Basic Windows Operations:

• To switch between running programs quickly, use Alt + Tab. Hold down the Alt key, and then each time you tap the Tab key, it will highlight an icon that represents the next-to-last accessed window. Keep pressing Tab until the window icon that you want is highlighted, and then let go of the Alt key.
• To close a program, use Alt-F4 (Alt key and the F4 function key at the top of your keyboard)
• To go through the program’s menu using the arrow keys, press the Alt key once or the F10 function key. This highlights the menu. You can then use the left and right arrow keys to select the menu you want, press the down key to go into that menu, etc. When you get the item you want, press Enter. To get back out of all the menus, press the Escape (Esc) or Alt key once.
• To get to the Windows Start Menu, press Control + Escape, or press the Windows key (looks like a flag by your Control key). Navigate it like any other menu, using the arrow keys and Enter.

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Entry Filed under: PC Basics, Productivity