Hotkeys Help You Work Faster

Do you ever hate having to take your hands off your keyboard because you need to do something with your mouse? I do. It’s a distraction which is why I try to use as many keyboard shortcuts or hotkeys as possible. Ctrl+C (copy) and Ctrl+V (paste) are my two favorite ones. It’s more accurate than selecting and copying using the mouse too. Thing is those are only two of the many hotkeys already pre-programmed into your computer. Here are a few that may be old news for you keyboard junkies but hopefully will help someone else who may not know about them.

Ctrl+S – Save as for most Windows based software. No more reaching for your mouse when you want to save a document quickly and save more often too

Ctrl+T – Open a new tab in Firefox

Ctrl+F – Find! Love this. Use it most on Firefox when I have to find a word or string of text on a page. Great for finding code too.

Ctrl+Z – Undo! Who could live without undo?

Ctrl+Tab – Switching between open windows.

Alt+Tab – Cycling through tabs – great on Firefox too if you have lots of tabs open.

Ctrl+A – Select all – yeah you can do mouse-like stuff too

Alt+4 – Close window

Windows+E – Open my documents folder – love this! So often throughout a day I switch between the browser and looking up files using explorer. This makes it much faster than clicking Start >> My Documents

Windows+D – Show desktop.

F2 – Rename a file.

For a more comprehensive list, see this article on Microsoft.com. Also, keep in mind that every application has its hotkeys for example did you know Gmail also has hotkeys? Check those out here.

Lynette enjoys discovering new ways to use technology or new technologies to use in a business and in turn help her clients apply them. You can find also Lynette at her blog, Twitter and Facebook