Windows Keyboard Shortcut of the Day

Looking at a page you want to come back to again and again? Press Ctrl+D — this will add the current page to your bookmarks (or “Favorites” as they’re called in Internet Explorer).

If you press Alt+Home in Firefox or Internet Explorer, you’ll immediately leave the page you’re viewing and go to your default page (the page you see when you start the browser) — same as if you click on the “Home” button in the toolbar.

Stop what you’re doing and pull up your favorite browser. Read a couple of pages, follow a couple of links. Wait a second, what was on the previous page? Don’t bother hitting the Back button with your mouse –just press Alt+Left Arrow. Now, don’t hit the Forward button either — instead, try Alt+Right Arrow.

Some people like coffee and some people prefer tea. Similarly, some keyboard users are function key people, and others prefer keystroke combinations. That brings us to today’s browser tip. Sometimes you want to reload a page in your browser. (Say, for example, you’re reading a news site and want to see the latest headlines). You can hit the F5 function key, or you can press Ctrl+R.

Doesn’t matter which one you use. And it doesn’t matter if your browser is Internet Explorer or Firefox. Either way, you’re gonna get your refresh without having to use a mouse to hit that toolbar button.

And grab a cup of coffee and tea while you’re at it.

This week we’ll focus on browser shortcuts which work in both Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox.

The first one is Ctrl+L. In Firefox, this jumps your cursor up to the URL bar, where you can type in a URL such as “www.google.com.” In Internet Explorer, an Open dialog box appears and you can type in a URL such as “www.google.com.”

If you want to jump your cursor up to the URL box, press Alt+D. (Thanks to Tony and Igg for the tip!)

Bonus Tip: Once your cursor is in the URL box, if you type in a word like “google” and press Ctrl+Enter, the browser will automatically expand it to the full URL name, “http://www.google.com,” (Sadly, this doesn’t work in IE’s Open dialog box.)

It’s up to the individual application, but if an application allows you to Undo, you can generally do so with the Ctrl+Z key. Try undoing some actions with Ctrl+Z.

Check the Edit menu (Alt+E) to see if Undo is listed, and what the keyboard shortcut is that’s listed next to the Edit | Undo command.

(If your application doesn’t support Undo, you’re probably out of luck, but you can try the Esc key.)

Quick, run Notepad. (You’ll find it under Start | Programs | Accessories — and if you run this program often, you might want to make a custom shortcut.)

Now press F5. Instantly Notepad pops in a timestamp, like this:

8:43 PM 3/22/2007

Pretty useful, right? If only more applications supported this shortcut. (We learned earlier that F5 has a very different function in Word and Excel.)

If you click on the icon in the upper left of an application (at the beginning of the title bar), a little menu opens, which is called the System menu:

The keyboard method of opening this menu is Alt+Spacebar. Then you can press N to Minimize the application, or X to Maximize, or any of the other underlined letters.

So, to minimize any application: Press Alt+Spacebar then N.

When a Windows application asks you a question, such as how many pages to print, it does so via a dialog box, which is a window that pops up and has an OK button and a Cancel button and one or more fields.

You can use the keyboard to handle dialog boxes and not bother with the mouse for 99% of dialog box tasks.

• The Esc key is always the same as clicking on Cancel — it gets rid of the dialog box without taking any action.
• The Enter key is the same as clicking on the default button. The default button has a thicker border around it than any other button. Usually the default button is the OK button, so pressing Enter is usually the same thing as clicking Ok.
• Use the Tab key to move from field to field. (Or press Shift+Tab to move back a field.)
• Press Alt plus the underlined letter from the field name to jump to a particular field.
• Pressing Spacebar while on a highlighted field that’s a checkbox will check or uncheck that field.
• If the dialog box has more than one tab (with different questions on each tab), usually pressing Ctrl+Tab will change tabs.

For most applications that support working with more than one document at once, Ctrl+N starts a new document, without having to answer questions about what kind of new document you want. Try it in Microsoft Word, Excel, etc.

Be careful when using Microsoft Outlook, because Ctrl+N has a different meaning depending on what section of Outlook you’re in. For example, in Calendar mode, Ctrl+N creates a new appointment, while in Mail mode, Ctrl+N creates a new e-mail message.

This one’s useful for laptops or whenever you want some privacy: Assuming you’ve set up a password for your Windows login username, press the Windows key+L. Immediately, the Lock Dialog will appear. To use your computer again, you must press Ctrl+Alt+Del, enter your password, and press Enter.

Let’s suppose you really like the Calculator program. Instead of having to select it from the Start menu or click on some little icon each time you run it, wouldn’t it be useful to be able to use a keystroke and have it pop up automatically? And suppose you have a few other programs you want to be able to launch quickly, without having to open the Start menu. Today’s tip is for you.

You can create your own custom shortcut keystroke for any application on your Start menu. (You can also extend this tip to apply to Web pages, documents, and much more, but we’ll save that more advanced part for a different day.)

Before you start creating shortcuts, make sure you write them down and keep them saved. It’s also a good idea to make an overall plan for what specific keystroke you plan to use for each of your favorite programs, so you don’t try assigning the same keystroke to more than one program.

For our example, we’ll assign a shortcut for the Calculator. Follow these steps:

1. Open the Start menu (with the Windows key or Ctrl-Esc).
2. Using the arrow keys, find the Calculator program (in your Accessories menu) and select it (but don’t launch it). One way to get there is to hit P to open the Programs menu, then use the up and down arrow keys until the Accessories menu is open, then use the right arrow key to open the Accessories menu, then use the up and down arrow keys until the Calculator program is highlighted.
3. Open the shortcut menu by either right-clicking on the Calculator menu item, or by pressing Shift+F10 when it’s selected. A shortcut menu appears, as shown here.
   
4. Choose the Properties menu item (just press r, since it’s the underlined letter). The Properites dialog box appears.
5. You’re interested in the “Shortcut key” menu. Press Alt+K to move down to that field, or hit Tab until it’s highlighted.
6. Now press your shortcut key. I recommend Ctrl+Alt+C. You’re limited to only keystrokes that start with Ctrl+Shift, Alt+Shift, Ctrl+Alt, or Ctrl+Shift+Alt. Ctrl+Alt is easy to type, and “C” for calculator should be easy to remember. Hit the keystroke you want, verify it shows up in that field, then press Enter. The dialog box closes.
7. Try pressing Ctrl+Alt+C (or whatever you selected) and verify that — like magic! — the Calculator appears.

There’s more we could do here, but give this a try.

We covered the Windows key previously. If you hold that key down and then press the “d” key, you’ll see the desktop. Press Windows+D again and your application windows will reappear.

Note: Some people like the Windows+M shortcut, which minimizes all applications. Windows+D and Windows+M are very similar, but I prefer Windows+D because it’s a toggle and because not every application can be minimized. So Windows+D is just a little bit more generally useful.

Quick, press the Alt key by itself. Chances are you now see the “File” menu become selected. Now you can use the left and right arrow keys to move from menu to menu, and the up and down arrow keys to open a menu and select different menu items.

Once you’ve mastered that, here’s the next step: You can press Alt plus an underlined letter in the name of the menu to open the menu. For example, the File menu has the letter F underlined, so pressing Alt+F opens the File menu.

Menus do vary from program to program, but almost every application has the File, Edit, and Help menus. Here are some of the most common menus and the key that usually opens that menu:

• Alt+F: Open the File menu
• Alt+E: Open the Edit menu
• Alt+V: Open the View menu (if there is one)
• Alt+I: Open the Insert menu (if there is one)
• Alt+O: Open the Format menu (if there is one) — F is already used for File, so the next letter, o, is used.
• Alt+T: Open the Tools menu (if there is one)
• Alt+W: Open the Windows menu (if there is one)
• Alt+H: Open the Help menu

For other menus, just look at which letter is underlined. For example, in Excel, Alt+D opens its Data menu:

Once a menu is opened, you can choose menu commands by pressing the underlined letter of the command you want (just the letter by itself, no Alt key).

For example, in Microsoft Word, once the File menu is opened, you can press the c key to “Close” the current document, or the a key to use the “Save As” command:

Tip: If a menu item has a “…” after it, then a dialog box will open. If not, then the menu command will be carried out immediately, usually with feedback only if something goes wrong.

In most applications, hitting Ctrl+P brings up the Print dialog box.

Last week we learned how to navigate using the keyboard. At the beginning of this week, we learned about the Shift key, combined with the navigation keys, to select text. We learned how to use Alt+Tab to switch back and forth between applications. And we covered Ctrl+C to copy, Ctrl+X to cut, and Ctrl+V to paste.

So, let’s put all of that together. Suppose you want to copy some text from a Notepad document into an e-mail. Here’s what to do:

1. Hold down the Alt key, and press Tab until Notepad is selected, then let go of the Alt key.
2. Use the arrow keys or other navigation keys to move to the beginning or end of the text you want to select.
3. Use Shift key and navigation keys to move to the other side of the text; notice how it highlights as you go as long as you’re holding down the Shift key.
4. Once the text is highlighted, press Ctrl+C. Nothing to seems to happen, but behind the scenes, the text you selected has now been copied to the clipboard.
5. Now press Alt the key again and hold it down while you hit the Tab key until the e-mail is selected.
6. Move your cursor using the arrow keys to the point where you want the text to appear.
7. Press Ctrl+V. The text appears.

You’ve just copied and pasted text between two different applications without using the mouse. Congratulations!

We previously mentioned Cut (Ctrl+X) and Copy (Ctrl+C), commands which take selected text and move or copy the selected text into the clipboard.

Once you’ve put something on the clipboard, you can paste it at the cursor location with Ctrl+V. You can press this multiple times, and each time a new copy is inserted. (If you have selected text when you paste, then the selected text is replaced with whatever is being pasted.)

(You can also use Shift+Delete to cut and Shift+Insert to paste in most applications, but be careful since Shift+Delete has a different behavior when working with files that we’ll discuss later.)

Press Alt+Tab. If you have more than one window open, pressing Alt+Tab switches to the most recent window you used. Pressing it again swtiches back. Try it a few times.

Now, try holding down the Alt key and don’t let go. Then press Tab (but don’t let go of the Alt key). A special window will appear.

While holding down the Alt key, keep pressing Tab. You’ll cycle through a list of open windows and applications. As soon as you have selected the application you want to use, let go of the Alt key, and you’ll immediately switch to that application.

(If, while holding down the Alt key, you press Shift+Tab, you’ll cycle backwards through the list.)

Note: There’s another keyboard shortcut for switching applications, Alt+Esc, which switches through Windows in the order you opened them, but it’s not nearly so useful, so forget about that one and use Alt+Tab instead.

Once you have selected something such as a block of text, press Ctrl+C to copy it into the clipboard, or press Ctrl+X to cut it from your document while putting it into the clipboard. (These keyboard shortcuts are the equivalent of using the Edit | Copy and Edit | Cut commands.)

Last week, we went through some navigation keyboard shortcuts. (You can review them by looking at all the posts in the navigation category, or you can take a look at the navigation reference page, which collects the navigation shortcuts presented so far in a single list.)

Now that you’re spending more time using the keyboard to navigate, it’s time to combine those navigation keys with the Shift key to begin selecting text.

(Selecting text is when you highlight it — allowing you to then perform a variety of tasks, such as erasing the selected text, applying a command such as making the selected text bold, or cut or copy it into the clipboard for later pasting.)

Here’s an example. Position your cursor in the middle of a line of text in an editing program (such as Microsoft Word or Notepad), then hit Shift+End. All of the text from the cursor to the end of the line becomes selected. If you hit the Backspace key or Delete key, it’s deleted.

Some useful combinations to try:

• Shift+Home: Select text from the cursor to the beginning of the line
• Shift+End: Select text from the cursor to the end of the line
• Shift+Ctrl+Home: Select text from the cursor to the beginning of the document
• Shift+Ctrl+End: Select text from the cursor to the end of the document
• Shift+Ctrl+Left Arrow: Select text from the cursor to the beginning of the current word (and keep hitting the Left Arrow key without letting go of the Shift and Ctlr keys to keep selecting multiple words)
• Shift+Ctrl+Right Arrow: Select text from the cursor to the beginning of the next word

Also, practice Shift plus any of the arrow keys. Suppose, for example, you want to delete some text from the end of a document or e-mail. Press Ctrl+End to move to the end. Now press Shift+Up Arrow until you’ve highlighted all of the stuff at the end you want to get rid of. Then press a key such as the letter A, and it will replace all of the highlighted text with whatever key you typed.

To round out our navigation week, let’s use an application-specific keyboard shortcut.

If you use Microsoft Word, try this (when editing a long document): Press F5, and the “Go To” dialog box appears. (It may look a bit different depending on which version of Microsoft Word you’re using.) Type in a page number, like 15, and press Enter. Your cursor should now be at the top of page 15. You can then press Esc to cancel the dialog box.

If you use Microsoft Excel, try pressing F5 and in the Go To dialog box, type in a cell (such as B500), then press Enter.

There are more advanced ways of using the Go To dialog box in both applications, but we’ll save that for a future day.

We’ll break up navigation tips with a more general purpose tip: How to use the keyboard to open a shortcut menu (also known as context menu) — the menu you get when you right-click somewhere.

The most general way to do this is press Shift+F10. (Remember, F10 is a function key, probably across the top of your keyboard.) Try it! Point your mouse somewhere and right-click. (You can press the Esc key to close the menu.) Then try pressing Shift+F10. (And again, Esc to close it.)

The other choice is to use a dedicated key. Chances are your keyboard has a “menu key,” which usually looks like this:

On most keyboards that have this key, it’s down by the Spacebar, to the right (near the Alt and Ctrl keys). On some keyboards, such as Dell laptops, it’s at the top center, near the power key.

If you have that key and it’s in a convenient location, spend today trying to practice using it to open shortcut menus for Windows and most applications you use. If you don’t have that key, practice Shift+F10 instead.