1. Hit Windows key + R to get the Run dialog box. Even though your screen is blank, Windows will ask you what command you want to execute.
2. Type cmd plus Enter to run the Command prompt. (You may know this as the DOS command screen.)
3. Press Alt+Enter to toggle full screen mode. This will force your video mode to text mode, which should fix the display problems.
4. Type EXIT and enter to close the Command screen. That will return you to Windows mode, and your video should now be restored.

Ideally you’d never need it… but sometimes you just need it!

In the meantime, if you have questions or need help with anything, let me know!

This is a job for Excel’s advanced filters, and you don’t need a mouse. Follow these steps.

1. In Excel, create a new worksheet. (Ctrl+N can help on that last part.)
2. If your data doesn’t have a heading row, put a header such as “Names” in cell A1. (Type in the header and press Enter.)
3. Right below the header, paste your data into Excel. (Remember you can use Ctrl+V to paste.)
4. With your cursor somewhere within the list, press Alt+D to open the Data menu, then press F to select the Filter command, then press A to choose the Advanced Filter command. The Advanced Filter dialog box appears.
5. Press Alt+O to select the second radio button option, “Copy to another location.”
6. Press Alt+T to select the “Copy to” entry, and type in the cell location you want, such as “b1″ for cell B1.
7. Press Alt+R to select the checkbox option for “Unique records only.”
8. That’s it! Press Enter to select OK.

A new list appears in cell B1 (or whatever cell you selected in step 6), in the same order as the original list — except with any duplicate entries completely removed.

In Excel, Ctrl+Backquote toggles on and off the display of formulas within cells.

(P.S. Sorry for the long time in between posts.)

1. Make sure your cursor is to the left of all the text you wish to erase. (Use the left arrow and right arrow key as necessary.)
2. Press Shift+End. All the text between your cursor and the end of the line is selected.
3. Press the Backspace (or Delete) key. The text is erased.

Much faster than pressing the delete key a bunch of times.

First, what’s a keyword search? In Firefox, you can type stuff in the location bar and press Enter. If you don’t type in a URL (such as “tivo.com”) and instead type in a keyword (such as “tivo”), Firefox figures you want to do a keyword search. By default, Firefox performs a Google “I’m feeling lucky” search, which isn’t that useful. However, you can change it to do a regular Google search instead.

Here’s how to change the configuration:

1. In Firefox, press Ctrl+L to go to the location bar. Type “about:config” and press Enter.
2. A warning appears that this might void your warranty. To press the “I’ll be careful, I promise!” button, hit the Space Bar. A list of configuration items appears.
3. By default, your cursor is in the “Filter” bar. Type “keyword.url” and after a second, just that option is listed.
4. Press Tab a couple of times until the option is highlighted. Then press Enter, and a dialog box labeled “Enter string value” appears.
5. Now, type in the following value for keyword.url:
   http://www.google.com/search?ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&sourceid=navclient&q=
   (The existing default string is pretty close to that — you’re basically just removing &gfns=1 from near the end of the default string.)

Now, press Ctrl+L and type in a keyword. Instead of just taking you to Google’s best guess of what you wanted to search for, you’ll now see a regular Google result page. Click the link you want.

Steve points out that one could easily change this option to any variety of other interesting URLs.

It’s not 100% keyboard only, but try this:

1. Press Alt+Ctrl+S, and a split cursor appears.
2. Press Up Arrow or Down Arrow until the split is where you want it, then press Enter. The screen is split.
3. Now, scroll to wherever you want (and remember the Ctrl+G or F5 shortcut that lets you go to whatever page you want right away). You scroll in one half, while the other half of the split displays the other portion of the document.
4. I don’t know of a keyboard method to change which part of the split you work with, so you’ll need to use the mouse to click in the top portion or bottom portion as needed if you want to make edits.
5. When you’re all done with the split, press Alt+Shift+C, and the split is removed.

Note that a split is really just a different way of viewing the same document — you only have one copy. Any changes you make in the top portion are immediately reflected in the bottom portion, and vice versa.

When doing so, there are a couple of quick shortcuts that work with any browser.

To start with, try press Shift then next time you click on a link. Instead of replacing the current web page with the contents of your link, a new page appears, with the contents of whatever web page that you clicked on.

(You can then close this new window with Ctrl+W.)

You can:

• Right-click in the title bar at the top of the Chrome window and select “Task manager” from the shortcut menu that appears.
• Press Alt+Space to see that same shortcut menu, then use the up and down arrow keys until Task manager is highlighted, then press Enter.
• Press Alt+Space, T
• Or just press Shift+Esc.

To close the Task manager dialog box, simply hit Esc.

One new concept in Chrome is the idea of an incognito session, where the history and cookies are not preserved. This could be useful if, for example, you’re at a friend’s house or an Internet café, or if you don’t want your spouse to see that you’ve been shopping for a surprise birthday present. Or other things.

To start a new incognito session in Chrome, just press Ctrl+Shift+N. A new window appears, with slightly different coloring and a “secretive browser person” icon at the top.

(To close the incognito session, just press Alt+F4 as you normally would to close a program. All tabs in your new window close at once.)

Chrome offers much faster loading speed and more stability as its main differentiators, but also a new feature called an “incognito session” (which we’ll cover later today), plus the ability to quickly use web sites (such as Gmail) as applications on your desktop and Start menu.

The majority of the Firefox keyboard shortcuts we’ve covered here previously do work in Chrome. There are a few exceptions, which I’ve outlined below.

Here’s what works:

• For tab navigation, you’ll use Ctrl+T to create a new tab, Ctrl+1 or Ctrl+2 (etc.) to switch tabs (or Ctrl+Page Up/Ctrl+Page Down), Ctrl+W to close a tab, and Ctrl+Shift+T to re-open a tab you just closed. Ctrl+L still jumps you up to the location bar (called an “omnibox” in Google Chrome parlance).
• Ctrl+R or F5 reloads the page. (And Ctrl+R or Ctrl+F5 forces a reload.)
• For navigation, Alt+Home goes to the home page and you can use Alt+Left Arrow and Alt+Right Arrow (or Backspace and Shift+Backspace) to go back or forward a page in your history.
• Ctrl+B toggles on/off the bookmark bar.
• Ctrl+D still sets a bookmark.
• Ctrl+J opens a download tab.
• Ctrl+H opens a history tab.
• Ctrl+U views source.
• You set font size the same way: Ctrl+= (aka Ctrl++) still makes the font bigger, Ctrl+- (dash) makes the font smaller, and Ctrl+0 resets it back to normal.
• Ctrl+K or Ctrl+E to search does still work too, but not quite in the same method as Firefox: It simply moves you up to the omnibox with a question mark pretyped, which will then allow you to type in your search term and press Enter to get a search result. (You cannot choose a specific search engine with Alt+Down Arrow as you can with Firefox.)
• Alt+Enter after typing a URL in the omnibar still opens a new tab with that content.

All in all, I’m pretty pleased with the keyboard control of Chrome, but there’s a lot of room for improvement in this beta:

• There’s no apparent way to open the “Control the current page” and “Customize and control Google Chrome” dropdown menu icons in the upper right, except by clicking.
• In a very serious breach of Windows usability, the F1 key does nothing at all instead of calling up help.
• The list of keyboard shortcuts in their help is very incomplete.
• Ctrl+S does nothing instead of saving the current web page, although you can right-click (even with Shift+F10) and choose “Save as” from the shortcut menu.
• At least one keyboard command, Ctrl+O to open a file, has no listing anywhere on any menu. (All keyboard shortcut commands should have toolbar icons or menu entries as equivalents, and those icons or commands should always list the keyboard shortcut as a visual reminder.)
• When Chrome offers to save a password when you log in to a site, there’s no keyboard method to say yes or no — you have to click on one of the buttons that appear.
• You can’t navigate your saved bookmarks in a menu to select a site as you can with Firefox’s bookmark menu. (In Chrome, you can only click on the bookmark toolbar under “Other bookmarks” or search bookmarks in the omnibox using Ctrl+L and typing in a few letters from the bookmark.)

Here are some of the Firefox keyboard commands that do NOT work in Chrome:

• F11 for full screen
• / to search within the page
  
• Shift+Delete to forget a form entry
• Ctrl+Shift+B does not let you organize/edit your bookmarks.
• In Firefox, F6 toggles between the bar and the document. In Chrome, it only goes to the omnibox and doesn’t let you leave.

Switch it off one time with Ctrl+F1.

Switch it off permanently by following these steps (which you have to repeat for Excel, Word, PowerPoint, etc.): Hit Alt+T to open the Tools menu, O to select the Options command, then deselect the “Startup Task Pane” checkbox using Alt plus whatever is the underlined letter (which is different in different programs — nice consistency there, Microsoft), then press Enter for OK.

Rechecks dependent formulas, and then calculates all formulas in all open workbooks, regardless of whether they have changed since last time or not.

I’ve done this before with a spreadsheet that had six dependent files, 60,000 rows and over 100 columns of complex formulas — it wasn’t done until after I came back from lunch.

Calculates all formulas in all open workbooks, regardless of whether they have changed since last time or not.

The technical definition of what F9 does, per Excel, is:

Calculates formulas that have changed since the last calculation, and formulas dependent on them, in all open workbooks.

Sometimes you don’t want to recalculate in all open workbooks. Perhaps, instead, you only want to recalculate the formulas in the sheet that you’re currently working with (because you don’t want to wait for all the other worksheets to get recalculated as well). If so, then press Shift+F9.

Here’s the technical definition of Shift+F9’s functionality:

Calculates formulas that have changed since the last calculation, and formulas dependent on them, in the active worksheet.

To do so, use the Tools | Options command, switch to the Calculate tab, then select Manual. (The keyboard method to navigate there is Alt+T for the Tools menu, O for the Options command, Ctrl+Tab to switch tabs to the Calculate tab, then Alt+M to select the Manual radio button. Then press Enter to close the dialog box.)

From now on, any time you change a number or formula, the spreadsheet won’t update itself until you press F9.

We’ve already seen three:

• Alt+1: Back (a folder)
• Alt+2: Up one level (of folders)
• Alt+3: Search the Web

But there are several more:

• Alt+4: Delete (if you have a file or folder selected)
• Alt+5: Create New Folder
• Alt+6: Views
• Alt+7: Tools (pulls down the Tools menu)

Because the buttons are in the same order, 1 through 7, it actually becomes fairly easy to remember which button to press.

Several of these, such as Alt+5, are actually useful. Whether or not you use these shortcuts depends on how often you use the buttons. Practice!

Remember, the easiest way to see this dialog box is to press F12 when using Word, Excel or PowerPoint to get the Save As dialog box, or to press Ctrl+O for the Open dialog box.

But, just suppose: You’re in Word or Excel or PowerPoint. You’ve opened up a file dialog box. It could be an Open file dialog box (by pressing Ctrl+O or using the File | Open menu, or by pressing Ctrl+F12). Or it could be a Save As file dialog box (by pressing F12, or selecting File | Save As).

And then you change your mind, and want to search the web instead. Instead of hitting Esc to cancel the file dialog box, and then pressing Ctrl+Esc to get the Start menu and then running your web browser, and then opening up a search engine, you can do all of that with one button. You could just use your mouse to hit this button, the “Search the Web” button:

Or, you could press Alt+3. When you do so, instantly the dialog box closes (with no action taken), and your web browser comes up, with a search engine displayed.

(Note to readers: If you know how to change the search engine used here from MSN Live to something else, please let me know. The standard methods don’t seem to work.)

It’s a pity this keyboard shortcut only works in Office apps and not all apps that use a file dialog box.

Each time you press Alt+1 you’ll go back another folder until you return to the one you started out looking at.

For Microsoft Office apps (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, etc.), you can do the same thing with Alt+2.

Try it!

Suppose, for example, you’re viewing top-secret plans in Word, and want to save a copy of them on your Desktop. You’d do the following:

1. Hit F12 to get the Save As dialog box.
2. Alt+2 several times, until the Desktop is displayed. (Normally you’d instead hit Shift+Tab, then Backspace several times.)
3. Type the file name you want and press Enter.

Not the right folder? Remember, you can move up a folder with the Backspace key, once you’ve moved focus to the file list pane — so press Shift+Tab then Backspace a few times to get to the Desktop quickly. We’ll have more tips on what you can do from this dialog box for the rest of the week.

Meanwhile, pity the poor semi-colon (;). Here’s a key smackdab on the home row of your keyboard. Your right pinkie gets a workout with the P key and the Enter key and the Slash key (/), but rarely is called upon to hit the semi-colon, where it rests. (You may recall that the reason our keyboards are laid out like they are is because with old manual typewriters, you needed to actually slow down typists to prevent key jams; thus, the home row became home to many infrequently used keys. My first typing class, in 7th grade in 1979, was actually taught using manual typewriters.)

So, kill two birds with one stone: Spice up some of your secure passwords with a semi-colon or two. That satisfies the requirement of having punctuation in the password, while also being an easy key to type. Be sure to vary the semi-colon’s place in your secure password: the beginning and end may be easier to remember, but the middle is more secure.

Similarly, Shift plus the Space Bar selects the entire row of cells.

For example, suppose you want to move a column. Follow these steps:

1. Move your cursor to some cell in the column you want to move. (Remember you can press F5 to instantly go anywhere.)
2. Press Ctrl+Space Bar. The entire column is selected.
3. Press Ctrl+X to Cut the column.
4. Move your cursor to the location right where you want the column inserted.
5. Press Shift+F10 to display the shortcut menu.
6. Using the arrow keys and Enter, select the Insert Cut Cells command.

Or, press Alt+Page Up. You immediately find yourself one screen to the right looking at your next batch of columns.

Conversely, Alt+Page Down moves you to the left.

(Compare to the regular Page Up and Page Down, which you already know moves you up and down a screen.)

Clicking? Moi? Nope, instead of reaching for the mouse, just press Alt+Shift+F10, and the menu then opens. (Just have your cursor somewhere in the cell with the Smart Tag.) Once the menu appears, it’s just a regular menu, and you can use the Up Arrow or Down Arrow plus Enter to select an item, or press Esc to cancel.

Similarly, in Microsoft Word, sometimes you’ll be typing and Word will make a correction and show a blue double underline. Move your mouse to the underline and a yellow lightning bolt appears. Click on the lightning bolt and you’ll have some menu items to control the behavior of whatever automatic correction Word made.

Again, clicking? No need. The same Alt+Shift+F10 will open the Smart Tag menu in Word. Just have your cursor somewhere in the word with the double blue underline.

We previously covered Ctrl+K to jump to the search box in the upper right. If you happen to use the Google toolbar, Ctrl+K has a different function, so some of you may prefer to use Ctrl+E to jump up there instead.

Now for the next step! Once your cursor is up there in the search box, type in a search term but do NOT press Enter to search yet.

Instead, you can press Alt+Down Arrow to pull down the list of search engines available. Then you can use the Up Arrow and Down Arrow to select a search engine, and then press Enter to search using that engine.

Firefox will remember your choice until the next time you change the engine using that same Alt+Down Arrow pulldown menu.
You can always use the Manage Search Engines menu item to edit your list of search engines. To add more, just press Tab Tab Enter from the Manage Search Engine List dialog box in order to hit that “Get more search engines…” link.

Why is that? Well, when you load a page, your browser stores a local copy on your computer — this is called a cache. Whenever you visit a page, Firefox asks the remote server if there’s any update to the version that’s saved locally. If the host says yes, then Firefox fetches the updated page. If the last updated date is not after the date of the one you have locally, then Firefox displays the version from your cache instead, saving bandwidth and time.

Occasionally this screws up (usually because the host is returning bad info about when the page was updated). So if you just KNOW there’s an update, you need to reload the page, overriding the cache.

To do that, press Ctrl+Shift+R, or Ctrl+F5 — this is sometimes called a “forced reload.”

Try out this sequence instead — you might find it more intuitive.

1. Press Ctrl+L (or Alt+D or F6) to move your focus to the address bar.
2. Start typing the URL. At this point, Firefox’s address completion kicks in, and you can use the up and down arrow keys to select the site you want to visit.
3. Instead of pressing Enter to open the site, or Ctrl+Enter to turn “tivo” into “http://www.tivo.com,” try pressing Alt+Enter. The site you have selected automatically opens in a new tab. Whatever page you were viewing stays in its own tab.

Even faster, you can also press Ctrl+Alt+Enter to automatically complete the URL in a new tab. So:

1. Press Ctrl+L to move your focus to the address bar.
2. Type a word for the domain name, such as google.
3. Press Ctrl+Alt+Enter. The domain name is turned into a full URL (so “google” becomes “http://www.google.com/”) and a new tab is opened with that page.

Ctrl+Shift+Del and a dialog box appears, with some default items to clear checked, and others not. (Remember you can use Tab and Space to change the checkmarks.) Once you press Enter, you’ve just wiped out all of your history (and theirs too, for that matter). Bookmarks do stay.

(Under Tools | Options, there’s a Privacy tab. Sadly you have to use the mouse to select this tab. Once there, you can select the “Always clear my private data when I close Firefox” option, if you find yourself clearing private data frequently. This option is off by default.)

But you can also use Ctrl followed by a number key.

• Ctrl+1: Switch to the first tab
• Ctrl+2: Switch to the second tab
• Ctrl+3: Switch to the third tab
• Ctrl+4: Switch to the fourth tab
• Ctrl+5: Switch to the fifth tab
• Ctrl+6: Switch to the sixth tab
• Ctrl+7: Switch to the seventh tab
• Ctrl+8: Switch to the eighth tab
• Ctrl+9: Switch to the LAST tab

No matter how many tabs you have open, Ctrl+9 will switch to the one that’s on the far right.

(You may wonder: What does Ctrl+0 do? Well, if you’ve used Ctrl+= or Ctrl+- to change the font sizes on a page, Ctrl+0 sets all the font sizes back to the default.)

(In previous versions of Firefox, to use this menu item, you’d have to hit Alt+B to open the Bookmarks menu, then press the Down Arrow key until Organize Bookmarks was highlighted, then press Enter.)

This is the enemy of all keyboard users: An option hidden away in the Display settings that hides the underlined letters telling you what keys you can press. Boo on Microsoft for making this a default.

To enable keyboard shortcut underlining, follow these steps:

1. Hit Windows+D to show the desktop.
2. Press Shift+F10 to show the shortcut menu.
3. Press up arrow to get to the bottom menu item, Properties, then press Enter to select it.
4. Press Ctrl+Tab to change tabs three times, until the Appearance tab appears.
5. Press Alt+E to hit the Effects button.
6. Deselect the last item by pressing H.
7. Press Enter twice to close the dialog boxes.

In Firefox, it toggles between the address bar and the web page — unless you’re viewing a web page with frames, in which case each press of F6 moves you to a different frame.
In Outlook, you can switch between the header of an e-mail (where you type the To address, Subject, etc.) and the body of the e-mail.

In PowerPoint, you’ll move between the slide, the notes, and the outline on the left.

In your browser, press Ctrl+H. A side panel appears, showing a history of sites you’ve visited.

In Firefox, the cursor appears in a Search box by default, so type in “shoes” and press Enter, and you’ll find sites with that word in the title or URL.

There’s also a View button. Press Alt+W, then Spacebar, and you can organize your browser history window by site, date, most visited, or most recently visited instead of the default that shows a combination of date and site.

When you’re done with the history sidebar, press Ctrl+H to toggle it off.

Sure, there’s the tool bar (and possibly the tab bar, if more than one tab is open) on the top, and the find bar (if open) on the bottom. But other than that, just you and your web page.

Hit F11 again to turn full-screen mode off.

Well, here’s how to fix it.

Next time you see the auto-complete entry appear, try this: press the down arrow to highlight the entry you want to remove, then press Shift+Delete. The entry disappears.

This works in the address bar as well!

Note: The saved text will return if you enter that text again — so either don’t make that typo again, or consider disabling Firefox’s form-fill feature under Tools | Options | Privacy | Remember what I enter in Forms and the search bar.

Suppose you’re using a Mac and you’re creating a selection rectangle in Photoshop. Normally, moving the mouse changes the size of the selection rectangle. If you hold down the Spacebar, suddenly you’re now moving the origin of the rectangle instead. (Practice this a bit to get the hang of it.)

Many of you are old hands at Photoshop and already knew that one. (You may have known it works in Windows versions of Photoshop as well, plus many other image editors on both platforms.)

Okay, so here’s the new bit: If you use OS X, as of 10.5, when you press Command+Shift+4 to capture part of the screen, you can now use the Spacebar trick to switch between resizing and changing the origin point.

Here’s a faster way.

First, press Tab until you get to the link you want to save. (You may have to press Tab quite a few times, depending on the page. One hint is to first scroll down so that the link you want to save is at the top of the page. Or, click on the link and drag down a little bit before letting go off the mouse button, which will select the link without clicking on it.)

Once the link you want to save is highlighted, press Alt+Enter and the Downloads window appears, showing your progress as file is saved.

Now press Alt+Tab to switch back from the Downloads window to your main browser window, or close the Downloads window (by pressing Ctrl+W or Alt+F4).

Now you can repeat: Tab, Alt+Enter, Alt+F4, Tab, Alt+Enter, Alt+F4 — and keep repeating until all the files are saved.

(By the way, in Internet Explorer, pressing Alt+Enter just does the same thing as Enter — it follows the link as if you clicked on it. In many other applications, we saw previously that Alt+Enter opens the Properties menu.)

If you hold down Shift and Option while using the keyboard volume keys, you can increase or decrease the volume in quarter steps.

Normally there are 17 levels of volume. If you use Shift+Option, you can get 64 levels of volume — great for when you want something just a little bit louder or softer.

Disclaimer: I don’t have a Mac, and haven’t used one in 10 years, so I have no personal experience with this.

Arrow keys: Move the map up, down, left or right.

+ key: Zoom in (you can use = instead of + too)
- key: Zoom out

Makes a nice alternative to dragging sometimes!

1. Minimize everything and show the Desktop with Windows+D. The Desktop appears.
2. Call up the shortcut menu with Shift+F10. A shortcut menu appears. (This won’t work if you have a desktop item selected. Another way to do this step is to just right-click on an empty part of the desktop.)
3. Use the arrow keys and Enter to select the New command, or press the W key to select New (since the w is underlined, that’s the shortcut key). A sub-menu appears.
4. Select “Shortcut” by using the down arrow and Enter. The Create Shortcut dialog box appears.
5. Enter in the URL for your favorite web site. Include the http:// part, so for example, enter in http://www.tivo.com/ if you want to visit TiVo.com. Press Alt+N to click the Next button. The “Select a Title for the Program” screen appears.
6. Type in a title for this shortcut (it doesn’t really matter what you type). For example, you could type “TiVo” if you entered tivo.com. Then press Enter to Finish. The shortcut appears on the desktop.
7. Press the first letter of the title you just entered. You may have to hit that letter more than once if you have multiple items on your Desktop all named with the same first letter. Eventually your item is selected.
8. Press Alt+Enter to get the Properties menu for this item.
9. Press Tab to select the Shortcut Key text box. Enter in a keystroke you’d like to use to call up this item. For TiVo, for example, you might enter Ctrl+Alt+T. Your keystroke must use either Ctrl+Alt, Ctrl+Shift, or Shift+Alt.
10. Press Enter to finish creating the shortcut to your favorite web site with your custom shortcut key.

Try it! Press your custom keystroke and notice how a web browser appears and your web page is loaded.

Now write down your new shortcut on a sticky note so you don’t forget and so you get in the habit of using it!

Note: If you create more than one shortcut with the same keystroke, the first shortcut created has priority.

Start by moving your cursor to the location where you want a hyperlink to appear. Then press Ctrl+K and the “Insert Hyperlink” dialog box appears. Now, enter a complete URL (such as http://www.tivo.com) in the Address input (where your cursor will be by default). If you had no text selected beforehand, then press Alt+T to get to the “Text to display” box and enter in the anchor text (such as “TiVo”). Press Enter, and the text appears as a link.
You can also use a network address to link your document to another one on a hard drive (by entering a URL such as \\my-server\mydirectory\).

Whoops! Wait a second, I wanted to read that!

To re-open it, press Ctrl+Shift+T. Phew!

By default, these keys will apply the label and color listed:

• 1: Important (red)
• 2: Work (yellow)
• 3: Personal (green)
• 4: To Do (blue)
• 5: Later (purple)
• 0: Clear all labels (black)

While we won’t be daily for a while (thus making a lie of the “of the Day” portion of the title of this blog), we’ll start back in on some tips.

Good to be back!

What tasks do you handle all the time that are a pain with the mouse? What are your own best productivity tips involving the keyboard?

If you get some mail that’s annoying but not spam and you don’t care to read any of the responses to that conversation, just press the “m” key. It then mutes the conversation so that it’s archived, AND, any future messages that arrive in that conversation are automatically archived, never sullying your inbox. Handy!

If you’re in the “Starred” section, Y will un-star the message.

If you’re in a custom labeled section, Y will remove that label. (For example, if you have a label for “Personal” and you’ve clicked on that Personal label link, so all of the messages you’re viewing are tagged as “Personal,” then the Y will remove the Personal label from the current message, meaning it will also be removed from the current view.)

If you’re in the Spam or Sent or All Mail section, the Y key does nothing.

Now you can use J and K (as we discussed) to move up and down messages, and Enter to open a message. When you’re all done, don’t forget G, I to go back to the Inbox.

I’d like to thank Russell Bradley-Cook for urging me to spend some time on Gmail, and for pointing out that the J and K keys can be used even when you’re reading messages. Try it out!

We’ll spend some more time on Gmail next week.

Why J and K? If you’re an old crusty computer user like me, you may recognize these as shortcuts from an ancient Unix editor called “vi.” I happen to know the lead user interface designer of Gmail — Kevin Fox. I asked him yesterday about the reasoning behind using these keys. Kevin is not a vi user, and he picked J and K because they were easy to type keys situated next to each other that didn’t have any other use. Originally he had proposed it backwards, with J for next and K for previous, based on the reasoning that most of the time you want to read the next message, so that should be the first key. But all the old vi users at Google convinced him to reverse it. He grudgingly did so, but only if the team promised to change it if they got complaints. They never received any complaints, so the keys have stayed.

From the regular Gmail screen, just hit Shift+C (after you’ve enabled keyboard shortcuts, per the previous post). A new window appears. Remember you can use the standard Alt+Tab to switch windows, or Ctrl+W to close the window (without saving or sending) if you change your mind about composing a new message.

First things first: In order to use keyboard shortcuts with Gmail, you have to switch them on. (They’re off by default.) To enable keystrokes, follow these steps:

1. In your favorite browser, log in to your gmail account.
2. Click on “Settings” in the upper right (next to your e-mail address).
3. In the default General tab, select the “Keyboard shortcuts on” radio button.
4. Click the “Save Settings” button at the bottom of the page.

You can reference this list of keyboard shortcuts for reference, or stay tuned here.

Credit for today’s tip goes to Jake, who left a comment earlier: Ctrl+Shift+Esc will instantly produce the Task Manager.

But, if you spend a lot of time in Microsoft Word, you might want to memorize this one and practice it today: Ctrl+D brings up the Font dialog box in Word, where you can change the font face, the font size, the font color, and a few other special formatting options. (Don’t forget you can press Ctrl+Tab to change the tabs in the dialog box to change character spacing and special effects.)

If you have selected text, pressing Ctrl+D will apply the font changes to whatever’s selected. Otherwise, if nothing’s selected, it’ll affect what you type next.

Find a paragraph that’s more than one line long, hit Ctrl+T, and you can see how it looks for yourself. Press it several times if you want to indent the second and later lines to the next tab stop.

Note: You can use Tab to select an object (just keep pressing Tab until the object you want is selected), but there’s no way that I know of to select multiple objects in PowerPoint via the keyboard.

Once an object is grouped, just use the arrow keys to move it around.

• Initial Letter Case
• ALL CAPS CASE
• lower case

So, if you have selected some text like “siX MILlion Dollar mAn” each time you press Shift+F3 you’ll see it switch between “SIX MILLION DOLLAR MAN” and “six million dollar man” and “Six Million Dollar Man”.

However! If you add some punctuation (like a period) at the end of what’s selected, instead of using Initial Letter Case, it’ll only capitalize the first letter of the sentence. So “I wiN!” will toggle between “I WIN!” and “i win!” and “I win!” (and not ever show “I Win!”).

Let’s be complete: Suppose you’re still using the mouse to drag a file icon somewhere. And let’s suppose you’re about to drag it to a folder for a different drive (such as your A: drive or a second hard drive like D:, or a network drive like U:). Normally Windows will make a copy when you drag a file between two different drives. But if you hold down the Shift key, it’ll move the file instead.

Note that when you have the Ctrl key held down (or are dragging the file to the same drive), the ghosted-out image of the file’s icon has a little “+” in it to show it’s about to be copied.

If you have either the Alt or Ctrl+Shift keys held down, the file’s icon has a little arrow to show it’s about to be created as a shortcut.

If you have the Shift key held down, the icon is normal to show it’s being moved.

(By the way, instead of remembering all this confusing stuff about Shift or Ctrl or Alt), another choice is to use the right mouse button when dragging instead of the left mouse button. Then when you let go of the button, you will get a shortcut menu asking you what to do with the file you’re dragging. You can use the arrow keys and Enter to select your menu choice instead of clicking on the choice you want.)

Next week we’ll talk about how to use keys with the Windows Explorer so that you never have to bother with dragging a file ever again.

We also have discussed dialog boxes and working with files using the Windows Explorer. In order to quickly rename a selected file, just press F2. It works a little like editing a cell in Excel.

Now scroll elsewhere and select some different text. Press Ctrl+Shift+V. Now that formatting you had copied is applied to the selected text. Magic!

In Firefox, go to the page you want to view and then press Ctrl+U. A new Window appears with the HTML code visible and colored appropriately.

(In Internet Explorer, you can press Alt+V to open the View menu, then press C to select the Source command. A Notepad window appears with the HTML code available for editing.)

Remember, Alt+F4 closes a window — use that when you’re done looking at the source HTML code.

(Note that in Internet Explorer, Ctrl+B lets you organize your bookmarks.)

One easy way is press Ctrl+F to re-open the Find box at the bottom of the screen, then press Enter. Each time you press Enter, you’ll jump down to the next occurrence of the text you’re looking for. (Note that this also works in Internet Explorer.)

Another way is you can press Alt+N to search for the Next example (as long as the Find box is visible).

Firefox is the open-source Web browser from Mozilla; learn more about it (and download it for free) here.

I previously reported that you can use Ctrl+F to Find text. Well, in Firefox, you can do it even faster — just hit the slash key (down on the lower right, next to the period and right Shift key).

Immediately your cursor will move to a Quick Find box at the bottom of the screen. Type in the text that you want to find on the current page in your browser, and you’ll automatically jump to the appropriate place and see that text highlighted.

If you have a sensitive file or a big file that you don’t want taking up disk space, press Shift+Delete to delete it instead. It won’t appear in the Trashcan, it’s just gone with only one confirmation dialog box to confirm.

Change your mind? You can press Ctrl+Z to Undo the delete operation, but don’t wait too long.

Once a list of computers is returned, you can press the Up and Down Arrow keys to select the computer you want to access, and then press Enter to see the list of shared folders and printers available on that computer.

One of the most useful shortcuts we covered is Windows key+D to show the Desktop. Related to that is a similar keystroke: Windows key+M will minimize all of the open applications that can be minimzied, showing only dialog boxes. Try it out!

(If you want to minimize only the current window, try this minimize shortcut.)

Once you’ve got the Run dialog box open, you can type in the name of a program and then Enter. Here are some popular ones:

• cmd: Command prompt for running DOS-style commands
• notepad: The Notepad app
• sol: Solitaire
• winword: Microsoft Word

For example, suppose you press the Windows key+E to open the Windows Explorer. As you navigate around, suppose you want to know more information about a folder or drive or file. Press Alt+Enter and you’ll get a Properties dialog box.

For example, if your cursor is like so (before “country’s”): “TiVo is the _country’s best DVR” and you press Ctrl+Delete, you’ll get “TiVo is the best DVR”.

If your cursor is in the middle of a word, such as “extra_ordinary” and you press Ctrl+Delete, you’ll be left with just “extra”.

You need to practice this one a few times to get used to it. It’s also an easy one to forget to use, but it’s worth making the effort to get the Ctrl+Backspace habit: If you type a long word and want to erase it instantly, it’s much faster to hit Ctrl+Backspace then the Backspace key by itself several times.

As an example, if you type, “I must remember to buy a new hippopotamus_” and your cursor is right after the word hippopotamus, the entire word hippopotamus is erased and your cursor is now positioned at the end of the sentence: “I must remember to buy a new_”. Then you can type “toaster” or whatever word you actually want to type.

If you’re in the middle of a word, it only deletes the portion that’s to the left of your cursor. So if you typed “Here comes the sun_king” and move your cursor (as indicated) between the “sun” and “king” portions, then press Ctrl+Backspace, what you’re left with is “Here comes the king.”

If you hold down the Shift key when inserting the CD, then nothing will automatically start, allowing you to use the Explorer (remember Windows key+E!) to view the files instead, if you like.

High Contrast mode will increase the font size for all windows and buttons as well as change your color scheme.

Just to get this one out of the way: We’ve covered the Windows key previously. The Windows key plus the letter U runs the Windows Utility manager, which lets you control how three specific utilities work on your computer:

• The Magnifier, which can enlarge sections of the screen (making them easier to see).
• The Onscreen Keyboard, which lets you use a mouse or joystick to type keys instead of the regular keyboard.
• The Narrator, which can read aloud text on screen.

Move your cursor to a cell that you want to copy. Suppose you want to copy it down five times. Hit Shift+Down Arrow four times to select the four cells below your current one. Then press Ctrl+D. Whatever is in the first cell is copied to fill the remaining cells. (Whatever was in those cells is overwitten.)

You can do the same thing to the right with Shift+Right Arrow and Ctrl+R.

You have quite a few other options as well:

• Ctrl+~ (Ctrl+Shift+`): General format
• Ctrl+! (Ctrl+Shift+1): Number format (with two decimal places and the thousands separator)
• Ctrl+@ (Ctrl+Shift+2): Time format
• Ctrl+# (Ctrl+Shift+3): Date format
• Ctrl+$ (Ctrl+Shift+4): Currency format
• Ctrl+% (Ctrl+Shift+5): Percentage format
• Ctrl+^ (Ctrl+Shift+6): Exponential format

In Excel, move somewhere in a row you want to hide and press Ctrl+9. The entire current row is hidden (and you don’t need to select the entire row, just have your cursor somewhere in the row).

Remember you can use Shift+Up Arrow or Shift+Down Arrow to select while moving; this way, you can select cells on several rows. Once you have cells from more than one row selected, all of those rows are hidden when you press Ctrl+9.

Next, try this: Press Ctrl+A to select the worksheet, then press Ctrl+Shift+9 — also known as Ctrl+( — to unhide all of the rows that are hidden.

Did you know there were quite a few things you can do during a presentation too?

During the presentation, press F1 to see a list of the keystrokes available.

The most useful ones are:

• Type a number and press Enter to go to that slide. For example, typing 15, Enter jumps to slide 15.
• Press B or the period key to turn the screen black. Press it again to return to the current slide.
• Press W or the comma key to turn the screen white. Press it again to return to the current slide.
• Press Ctrl+P to get a Pen pointer, allowing you to use the mouse to draw on the slide. (These drawings are NOT saved.)
• Press E to erase the drawings (or just go to the next slide).
• Press Ctrl+A to return to the standard Arrow pointer
• Press A to hide the arrow pointer (invisible cursor)
• Press Shift+F10 for a menu of these and other options.

This doesn’t work in edit mode, unfortunately; for that, you need to use the Insert menu’s Duplicate Slide command. (Get there simply by pressing Alt+I, D).

If you’re entering text, first press Esc to cancel text entering mode. Then press the Tab key; every time you press Tab, you’ll select a different object. (This is invaluable to switch between the title and the text body, for example.) When an object is selected, the arrow keys will move it.

While moving an object, it will snap to the grid unless you hold down the Ctrl key.

To insert a new slide and start typing without using the mouse, try these steps:

1. Press Ctrl+M to insert a new slide.
2. Press F6 to select the slide. (Each time you press F6 it switches between the open panes on the interface.)
3. Press Tab to select the title box. Type your title.
4. Press Esc to cancel text entry.
5. Press Tab to select the text box. Type your text.

The above keystrokes get easier with practice, and soon you can be in PowerPoint Power Typing mode!

Today’s tip is quite handy when entering or editing text in PowerPoint: Press Ctrl+T to bring up the Font dialog box, where you can edit the font face, style, size, color, and special effects.

(One wonders why this eminently handly tip isn’t usable in Word, Excel, or Outlook. In Word, it’s useful for the hanging indent function — but how often do you use that? In Excel, it seems to do nothing at all. In Outlook, it functions just like the Tab key, so that’s a waste.)

In the spellecheck dialog box, don’t forget to use Alt plus an underlined letter to hit the button! Using Alt+A to Add a correct word (such as your last name) to your custom dictionary is smart because it saves time in two ways — now, by saving you from having to use your mouse to hit the button, and later, by preventing this correctly spelled word from ever wasting your time again.

You can also use Ctrl+< and Ctrl+> — but while that may be easier to remember, you have to use the Shift key, so I prefer the square brackets. Also, that keystroke doesn’t work in Outlook.

(If you need to, you can review how to select text with the keyboard.)

Excel doesn’t allow any of these keystrokes. Excel is a bit of a fuddy-duddy that way, refusing to play along.

• Ctrl+L: Left justify the current paragraph, but keep the right margin ragged
• Ctrl+R: Right justify the current paragraph.
• Ctrl+E: Center the current paragraph (since Ctrl+C is already taken with Copy, they had to use the second letter.)
• Ctrl+J: Left justify the current paragraph, but keep the right margin justified

What does “justification” mean? Nothing to do with justice. I’m not sure why justification is called what it is. But that’s what it’s called; for more, check out wikipedia’s entry on justification.

This is left (Ctrl+L).

This is centered (Ctrl+E).

This is right (Ctrl+R).

This paragraph is fully justified, which means the right margin is in a straight line. The rest of this paragraph is just nonsense text. The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.

This paragraph is left-justified, which means the right margin is uneven, or “ragged.” The rest of this paragraph is just nonsense text. The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum

Quite a few other applications alllow the use of these four keystrokes as well. But not Excel.

Once there, type in a number such as 18 and press Enter. Whatever text is selected will change to the new size; if no text is selected, whatever you type next will be at the new size.

Does this work with Microsoft Outlook? Alas, no. That would imply a consistency of design that, sadly, does not exist.

In many applications, you can press F3 to repeat the last find.

Some applications use a different key for this; for example, in Microsoft Word, it’s Shift+F4.

(Compare this to Ctrl+W to close the current window.)

First, select an e-mail. (Remember to press F6 to make sure you’re in the e-mail plane, then use the arrow keys or home and end to select the e-mail you want to flag.)

Second, press Ctrl+Shift+G, and the Flag for Follow Up dialog box appears. Your cursor will be in the “Flag to” field. Use the up and down arrow keys to select the appropriate flag. Press Tab to flip to the flag color field. You can again use up and down arrow keys to select a color (or use Alt+Down Arrow to see the list).

Third, if you want to enter a due date, press Tab, and type in your date. You can optionally press Tab and type in a time. Then press Enter to select OK (or Esc to change your mind and cancel).

To quickly clear a flag, highlight an e-mail and press Ctrl+Shift+G, then press Alt+C to select Clear Flag. This removes the flag entirely.

To mark an item completed, highlight an e-mail and press Ctrl+Shift+G, then press Alt+O to select the “Completed” box, then press Enter.

Why does this work? On the toolbar, note the underlined “o” in the “Today” button. Any of the underlined letters can be used along with Alt instead of moving the mouse to click on the button.

Some useful shortcuts are then easy to find — Alt+I for Find, Alt+Y to go to Day view, Alt+W for Week view, Alt+M for Month view, and so on.

(Remember, use Tab to move from field to field when creating your e-mail message, jumping from To to Cc to Subject to the body.)

Another way to skin that cat is to press Ctrl+1 (using the tip from yesterday), then Ctrl+N.

You can find a lot of similar shortcuts by checking out the File | New sub-menu (remember, Alt+F opens the File menu, then you can press either w (since the w in New is underlined in the menu) or Enter or the Right Arrow key to open the New menu.

There are a few more as well:

To start things off, when sending e-mail, don’t bother clicking on that “Send” button — press Ctrl+Enter to send. You’ll need to confirm with a dialog box the first time.

(Note that this will work with many other e-mail programs as well.)

For many Dell laptops, it’s the End key in the upper right.

Press Fn plus that key, and your speaker will be muted.

(Usually closing the screen accomplishes the same task, but sometimes you want to leave the screen open.)

If you’re on a plane or in a hospital, you should disable your wireless receiver. Or suppose you’re riding in a train or car and you know there’s no wireless signal, you’ll increase your battery performance if you disable the wireless receiver.

Hit Fn+F2 and it’ll toggle wireless on and off. (Practice it a few times so you can recognize how the icons in the system tray appear, so you’ll know to switch it back on if you ever disable it by accident.)

Most laptops have an “Fn” (or “Function”) button, usually in the lower left, and quite often color-coded in blue. This Fn button usually is used to get alternate keystrokes, necessary because a laptop keyboard usually has fewer keys than a desktop keyboard, so more keys have to do extra duty. For example, the “J” key usually doubles as a 1 on the number pad, so Fn+J produces a 1.

On many laptops (but by no means all), the function keys across the top center double as special laptop controls when used with the Fn button.

You’re no doubt familiar with the Fn+F8 key to toggle on the external monitor. This isn’t universal, but it’s pretty common. (I’ve also seen laptops that use Fn+F7 for the same purpose.)

Usually Fn+F8 cycles between the following three modes:

1. Laptop monitor only
2. Laptop monitor plus external monitor
3. External monitor only

Once you have the Explorer running, you can navigate the directory tree on the left with the arrow keys. Up and down move up and down the items; to expand one of the plus signs press the right arrow. Left arrow jumps up to the top of the current directory tree, and then pressing it again closes the current directory if you’re at the top of a directory.

Press Tab to cycle between the directory tree (on the left), the address bar (at the top, where you can type in a location such as “C:\music”), the file list (on the right), and the menu bar.

In the directory tree or the file list, pressing a letter jumps down to the next file or directory in the list that begins with that letter.

Remember, you can use Shift plus arrows to select files in a group. (You can also Ctrl+left click to select arbitrary files. You can press Ctrl+Spacebar to do the same, and keep the Ctrl held down while you use the arrow keys to move up and down the file list while moving to the next file.)

Press Delete to delete the selected file or directory (or more than one if you have selected more than one). Anything deleted will go to the trash. However, pressing Shift+Delete will delete the file permanently, without it going to the trash. You can also copy selected files by press Ctrl+C (and then Ctrl+V in a new directory to paste them, finishing the copy). Or, substitute Ctrl+X for Ctrl+C to move the selected files.

However, you may not know that if you press Alt+Prnt Scrn, you get a copy of only the currently selected window. You won’t get the taskbar or any other windows on your display. Then you can run a program (such as Microsoft Word or the Paint application included with Windows) and press Ctrl+V to paste in the screen shot.

For example, in Microsoft Word: Press Ctrl+H, enter some text to search for, press Tab, enter some text to be replaced, then press Alt+A to use the “Replace All” button to replace all of the text in the document.

But, there’s an easier way. First, let’s try “Extend Mode” with F8. If you press F8, you enter Extend Mode, and now the arrow keys will extend the selection. (Of course, we already covered here that pressing Shift when you use the arrow keys does the same thing without messing around with the F8 key.)

However, this next bit’s useful. If you press Shift+F8, then you lock in the current group of selected cells, and can use the arrow keys to move to another area, and then select new cells (either using the normal Shift select method or Extend Mode).

Once the cells are selected, you can do whatever you like to them, such as bold with Ctrl+B.

How many times have you started to try to select your column of numbers by using the mouse and then Excel starts scrolling off the screen like mad? Before you know it, you’re down at row 30,000 and then are trying to scroll back up (all while holding down the left mouse button) only to end up scrolling too far the other way. No fun. So — don’t try to play games of dexterity with Excel. If you want to select everything in the block where your cursor is, try Ctrl+*.

Once you’re editing a cell, you can use the standard navigation keys (Home, End, Ctrl+Left Arrow, Ctrl+Right Arrow) to get to where you want, then press Enter to accept your changes (or press Esc to cancel).

For example, suppose you need to change the number “151,000″ into “15,100.” Don’t retype it! Just press F2, then press Backspace to get rid of the extra zero, then press Enter. Done!

Load up an Excel spreadsheet for practice, and then position your cursor somewhere in the middle of some cell entries. (Remember you can use the F5 key to go to a location.)

Now press End then the Right Arrow key (one after the other). You’ll go to the rightmost entry in the column of cell entries. Hit End, Down Arrow. You’ll move down until you hit the next empty cell.

If you start in an empty cell, Excel will keep moving in the direction of the arrow key you press until it hits a non-blank cell.

One of the most useful Excel shortcuts is Ctrl+1 (that’s the number one), which brings up the format cell dialog box. Once there, recall you can press Ctrl+Tab to cycle between tabs on the dialog box (Number, Alignment, Font, etc.).

To use the keyboard with the dialog box, you may want to review keyboard navigation of dialog boxes.

Let’s see an example and put together some of the Firefox tips from this week. Suppose you’re reading a Web page and suddenly need to check a different site (for example, you’re browsing a vacation site and want to check the weather). Press Ctrl+T to open a new tab, type in the site name such as “weatherunderground,” press Ctrl+Enter to complete the URL name and load the page, find the information you need, then press Ctrl+W to close the new tab.

Try this out with Firefox and Excel to start off.

In Firefox, remember from yesterday that you can create a new tab with Ctrl+T. Now use Ctrl+Page Up to rotate through the pages (or Ctrl+Page Down to rotate the other way).

In Excel, you’ll start out with three sheets (Sheet1, Sheet2, Sheet3) when you start a new document. Ctrl+Page Down will move from Sheet1 to Sheet2 and Sheet2 to Sheet3. Ctrl+Page Up will move from Sheet3 to Sheet2 or Sheet2 to Sheet1.

For dialog boxes, if Ctrl+Page Up and Ctrl+Page Down don’t change tabs for you, try Ctrl+Left Arrow and Ctrl+Right Arrow, or Ctrl+Up Arrow and Ctrl+Down Arrow. Unfortunately, applications aren’t always as consistent as we’d like.

If you want to change the search engine by choosing a different one from the pulldown list built in to Firefox, you can press Alt+Down Arrow when your cursor is in the search box, and you’ll see the pulldown menu. Use the Up or Down Arrow keys until the search engine you want is highlighted, then press Enter.

(Note that this feature is for finding web pages. If you just want to search for text on the current web page, you want to Find instead.)

• Ctrl+=: Increase font size
• Ctrl+Dash: Decrease font size

Press Ctrl+= (that is, the Ctrl key held down, and then the = key) and the font size on the current page or e-mail will increase.

(A lot of people write this tip as Ctrl+Plus, because the mnemonic of the + key increasing the font size is easy to remember, but you don’t need the Shift key in there.)

Ctrl+Dash (that is, the - key, or minus — the key right next to the = key) will reduce the font size.

Each time you press the key, the font gets bigger or smaller. When you want to go back to normal, press Ctrl+0. (Thanks to Steve in the comments for that last one.)
(This is a little hard to write, given the terminology I’m using. I should refer to “Control with the Plus key” as Ctrl++ and “Control with the Dash key” as Ctrl+- but that looks really weird. Sorry if today’s tip is confusing!)

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.

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.)

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.)

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.)

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!

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.)

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.

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.

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

If you prefer, you can use Ctrl+G instead of F5.

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.

And you already knew that Home by itself takes you to the beginning of the line where your cursor is, and End by itself takes you to the end of the current line, right?

Today’s tip is to use the Ctrl key plus either the Left Arrow key or the Right Arrow key. Each time you press this keystroke, you’ll move to the beginning of the previous or next word. Try each several times to get the hang of it.

If you have previously saved the document (or had opened an existing document), then Ctrl+S uses the same filename as before. No news is good news — if you don’t get an error message, you can assume your save worked fine.

If you haven’t saved the document yet, you will be prompted for a filename automatically. Type in the filename and press Enter.

Ctrl+S is the equivalent to clicking on the File menu and then clicking on the Save command. Note that most programs will show you the Ctrl+S shortcut next to that Save menu command (see image below). Use those visual cues!

• Ctrl+Esc opens the Start menu. (Instead, you could use the Windows key.)
• Pressing the u key selects whichever menu item has an underlined u. In this case, we want to select the “Shut Down…” command. The “u” in “Shut Down…” is underlined, which means you can press the u key key to select it. (Note that if your menu has other options that begin with a U, such as “User Preferences,” then you’ll have to hit u more than once and then hit Enter when Shut Down is selected.)
• A dialog box labeled “Shut Down Windows” or “Turn off computer” appears. Windows remembers the last option you selected when shutting down. If “Shut down” is the highlighted option, you can press Enter to select it. If the wrong option is selected, you can change the selected option with the arrow keys before you press Enter.

We’ll start things off with the “Windows” key. Most computer keyboards built since 1995 have this key, usually down between the Alt and Ctrl keys, to the left of the Spacebar. On most keyboards, it looks like this:

Pressing this key (by itself) opens the Start menu. Pressing it again switches off the Start menu.

Once the Start menu is open, you can use the arrow keys to select a menu item. Pressing the Enter key launches the selected menu item.

What if you don’t have a Windows key on your keyboard? Just press Ctrl+Esc instead.