Explore your keyboard - the time saver!

Wonder how you could speed up your day-to-day work on your computer and rest your eyes and save time for your family and friends? To get started, I have here, simple tips for office people who want to shorten their time in getting tasks done.

We all are experts at multi-tasking when sitting on a computer. Ever been in a situation where you find yourself having a whole lot of programs open at a time? And at some point, you wanted to get rid of everything that’s blocking the view of your Desktop icons likes My Computer, My Documents or just files on the Desktop. Many of us do that by clicking on the “Show Desktop” button next to the “Start” button on your taskbar. Try the easier way just by pressing and holding the Windows key (between Ctrl and Alt keys) and press “M”. Done with Desktop? Press and hold the Windows key, Shift key and “M” and you should find all of those open or “maximized” programs back on your screen. What a life saver!


Try some more shortcuts below:

Getting started…

Alt + Tab	Toggles between open programs Use this when 2 or more programs are open and you want to switch from one to another
Ctrl + Tab	Toggles between open documents in the same program Different from Alt+Tab, use this when 2 or more documents are open within the same program and you want to switch from one document to another
Alt + F4	Quits any open program – works for shutting down Windows too! Exactly like the “X” button on the top-right corner of every Windows program, use this to close any program
Ctrl + F4	Closes only the current document Use this when you want to close only the current open document and not the program altogether

While editing text…

Ctrl + C*	Copy
Ctrl + X*	Cut
Ctrl + V*	Paste
Ctrl + B	Bold
Ctrl + I	Italic
Ctrl + U	Underline
Ctrl + Z*	Undo
Ctrl + A*	Select All
Ctrl + P	Print
Ctrl + Left or Right Arrow	Move the blinking cursor left or right skipping one word at a time
Shift + Left or Right Arrow	Make text selection one word at a time

* Can be used while dealing with files and folders as well

While dealing with files and folders…

F2	Rename a file
F3	Open Find tool to search for files or folders in your computer

While surfing the web…

F5	Refreshes the current webpage
Alt + Left Arrow* or just Backspace	Go back to previous page
Alt + Right Arrow*	Go forward one page
Esc (Escape Button)	Stops the page immediately from loading
Alt + Home	Go to your Homepage
Home	Go back to the top of a webpage
End	Go directly to the bottom of a webpage
Ctrl + N	Open a new browser window
Ctrl + Enter	Automatically put the preceding “http://www.” and succeeding “.com” when typing a website address in the Address Bar
Shift + Click on a link	Open the link in a new browser window
Ctrl + D	Add or bookmarks the current webpage to your Favorites

* Works well while dealing with files and folders too

Getting used to these shortcuts can really make life easier, giving back to you all that time you needed to catch a movie with your family.

Just for Geeks Don’t like small text size while surfing the web? While on a website, roll your mouse wheel upward while holding the Ctrl key and see what happens!

Till then… Alt+F4!