Helpful Computer Shortcuts

In this article I will look at shortcuts that can be used to speed up work in front of the computer on Windows. There are so many available and very often they are completely ignored or forgotten about. Once you have taught yourself to use these shortcuts however, you'll most likely notice that they help a lot. In addition to that it looks professional using the keyboard to do tasks you before had to reach out to the mouse to perform.

The first shortcut is CTRL+C (push the CTRL button and the C button at the same time). This copies any text that is selected. Alternately you could use CTRL+X to cut the text out. Then use CTRL+V to paste the text somewhere else. This way you won't have to right click and choose copy and then paste. If you want to take it even one step further, move the cursor to the beginning of the text you wish to select. Then hold down the SHIFT button, and push the -> (right arrow) key until the text you wanted to select is selected. If you want to select several lines, you can push the down-arrow as this selects entire lines. Try it out in a word processor and see how easy it is delete, copy or paste text just by using the keyboard. This also applies to files in a folder, icons on the desktop etc.

If you want to select all the text in a window, or all the files in a folder hit CTRL+A. Everything in that window gets selected.

To mark text as bold or italic, push CRTL+B or CTRL+I. To undo an action you can push CTRL+Z.

There are many shortcuts that deal with other things than text processing too. If you want to delete files without having them ending up in the recycle bin you can push SHIFT+DEL as this will permanently delete them without making you go through recycle bin, thus saving you one step.

To switch between open programs on the computer you can use ALT+TAB, and make your selection by the using TAB several times while holding in ALT.

While using an internet browser such as Firefox or Internet Explorer there are shortcuts that will greatly help in tabbed browsing. To open a new tab push CTRL+T and then use CTRL+TAB to switch between the open tabs.

F5 refreshes the current window, so if you made any changes somewhere and you don't see it yet, or you are waiting for a non-responsive website hitting F5 updates the window for you.

These little tricks might take a little practice to fully learn, but once you have learned them it's like riding a bike. They go automatically making computer-work a lot easier.