10 More Tips and Tricks to Make Windows Easier

[VelMurugan]

10 More Tips and Tricks to Make Windows Easier

Some of them you may know, but it's amazing (to me at least) how many people don't know these simple shortcuts and helps.

(If a key name is in bold, it means you HOLD IT DOWN while pressing the other keys)

1. When entering things like usernames and passwords into a dialog box, you normally press tab to go to the next item. If you want to go backwards (or up) to the previous item, press Shift Tab. This is useful when you want to type over whatever is in the edit box, as shift tabbing to it makes it highlighted, so that you just type, and that highlighted text is replaced without you having to delete it first.

2. To put a CD/DVD into a drive without it playing automatically, just hold the shift key down while you load it.

3. In Internet Explorer, to go back to a previous webpage, press the Backspace key on your keyboard. This is useful when the webpage comes up without a back button that you can click.

4. The F5 key usually refreshes the window you are in. If you've just saved a file and it doesn't appear in your file list in Explorer, hit F5 and it should appear.

5. Ctrl U Underlines your selected text. Ctrl I puts it in Italics.

6. Ctrl Z is an undo function. Even works in Solitare! To reverse your last mistake, just do Ctrl Z.

7. Windows Key and D minimise ALL your open windows. Doing it again restores them to normal. It's the same thing as clicking the little desktop icon on your quicklaunch bar.

8. Ctrl Home will take you to the beginning of your document (or web page). Ctrl End will take your cursor to the end of your document or web page.

9. (I'm sure everyone knows this one, but our secretary didn't!) If you want to open a link in a web page in a new tab, in Internet Explorer 7 and above, click the link with your mouse wheel. (If you push the mouse wheel down it also clicks, for those who don't know.)

10. Select a word in your document and press Ctrl H. A Replace dialog box will pop up and you can then replace all occurrences of this word or phrase in your document. Similar for Ctrl F which is to find other occurences of the phrase.

Bonus tip! If you have a lot of tabs open in Internet Explorer, press Ctrl Q to view overgrown thumbnails of all your open web pages. Kinda funky! Then you just click on the one you want to go to it.

Well, that's all the tips for this article. Knowing your way around all the keyboard shortcuts can be very useful, because the keyboard is one window that's always on top, always available!

Source : ArticleBase