Every regular windows user will be familiar with the combination of keys: CTRL+ALT+DEL. This magic combination is used to lock the screen, log in or more often than not force an unresponsive application to close. Other commonly used key combos are CTRL+C and CTRL+V for copying and pasting or F5 to refresh a page in your Internet browser. These common shortcuts are incredibly useful and improve productivity by making tasks that would usually require some pointing and clicking possible with only a few keystrokes.
These are not the only key combos around that can improve your productivity and make your working day a few minutes shorter; in fact there are a lot more. Here are some of the more useful ones:
- Ctrl + Shift + Esc - open task manager
- Winkey + D - toggle ‘show desktop’ (Minimises all windows and shows the desktop)
- Winkey + L - lock workstation (Locks the workstation if you have a password set)
- Winkey + E - Windows Explorer (Manage your files with Windows Explorer)
- Middle click a link (or Ctrl + click) - loads a web page in a new tab
- Middle click a tab - close tab
- Middle click back button - open history in new tab (not for IE)
- Ctrl + F5 - clear page cache and refresh webpage (Try this if a page isn’t refreshing properly)
- (Shift +) Tab - when filling out a form, skip to next (or previous) form field
- Alt + (Shift +) Tab - switch windows forwards (or backwards)
- Ctrl + (Shift +) Tab - switch tab/document forwards (or backwards)
- Hold Shift while inserting removable media - prevents ‘auto run’
- Shift + Delete - permanently deletes files (without going to recycle bin)
- Shift + right click - usually adds ‘experienced user’ context menu options
- F2 - ‘edit’, renames selected file. Also used with spreadsheet cells.
- Ctrl + Scroll - zoom web page, document, file thumbnails, or desktop icons on Vista/7
- Alt + PrtScn - copies an image of the current window to clipboard (If you ever need to take a screenshot of an application or error message for your friendly IT staff)
- Print Screen (PrtScn) - takes a picture of your screen and puts it in the clipboard. You can paste it in Paint.
- Drag with right click - provide additional options when dragging (copy/move/create shortcut)
- Esc - close a dialogue box
- Double-click window title - maximize the window
- Space - fill in a checkbox, press the highlighted button or scroll down
- Ctrl + F4 - close tab/document
- Alt + F4 - close window
- Ctrl + left/right buttons - skip text by word, rather than by letter (hold shift to select)
- Ctrl + up/down buttons - skip text by paragraph, rather than by letter (hold shift to select)
- PgUp, PgDn - scroll up/down one page
- Home - skip to top of page
- End - skip to end of page
- F5 - refresh page/folder/dialogue
- Backspace - navigate to the previous page (web browsers)
- Ctrl + Enter - line-break (goes to next line, but not a full paragraph)
- Ctrl + Z - undo
- Ctrl + Y - redo (reverse undo)
- Ctrl + X - cut
- Ctrl + C - copy
- Ctrl + V - paste
- Ctrl + - save
- Ctrl + - find in page/doc
- Ctrl + A - select all
- Shift + click items in a list - select a continuous group of sequential items from a list
- Ctrl + click items in a list - select multiple individual items from a list
- Ctrl + [B, I, U] - bold, italic, underline
- Ctrl + Esc or Windows Key - open start menu
You may recognise a lot of these shortcuts and if you didn’t or you don’t already use them I really encourage trying them out. Once you get into the habit of using shortcut keys you won’t turn back; the usefulness is immediately obvious.