Today is Melbourne Cup Day in my home city of Melbourne: a day of high fashion, horses and a four-day weekend for most people.
I’m celebrating with an episode talking to you about what on earth keyboard shortcuts are and how they help.
A keyboard shortcut is a series of two to three keys that you press together
that do something quickly for you. If you do a lot of typing you have both hands on the keyboard then these shortcuts allow you to keep your hands on the keyboard, rather than reaching for the mouse. They’re really useful and a time saver once you get used to them.
Many keyboard shortcuts utilise the Ctrl keys on the bottom row of the keyboard the outer left and right of the main part of the keyboard, the Alt keys either side of the spacebar, the Windows key between the left Ctrl and Alt keys, and the Function keys across the top of the keyboard.
Three of the most common keyboard shortcuts that work in almost every
program are Copy: hold the Ctrl key down and then press C this is usually denoted like this [CTRL+C]. Paste: which is [CTRL+V] and Cut: which is [CTRL+X]. Copy stores whatever is currently highlighted in a special storage area called the clipboard. Paste simply takes that same item from the clipboard and puts it back in your document where the cursor is located. Cut is copying something but also deleting it from the document which is great if you want to move it somewhere else. [CTRL+Z] will undo whatever you’ve just done.
Other useful windows shortcuts include [F5] which causes the screen to refresh in many applications including web browsers and windows explorer. Also for windows explorer is the Windows key + E [Win+E] which opens a new windows explorer window and then [CTRL+Shift+N] which creates a new folder for you in the current folder.
[Delete] deletes the highlighted item sending it to the Recycle Bin while [Shift+Delete] deletes it completely, bypassing the Recycle Bin, so be careful.
Now it’s your turn; have a play with using the Windows key and the four arrow keys and see how you go moving windows around.
The final shortcut I’ll leave you with is [CTRL+F] which is the search or find shortcut, allowing you to type a few letters, a word or a phrase and see if or where it is contained in the current document or webpage.
I hope that was really helpful for you. There’s also a great reference sheet from Microsoft Support Keyboard Shortcuts.
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Thank you so much for watching and have a great day!