Why Use Them?
Keyboard shortcuts have long been a must for anyone working on documents or spreadsheets. If your fingers are already typing, it’s just so quick to do some really useful things as you go, like saving your progress, or changing basic text formatting – bold, underscore, italic.
Using a mouse is of course easy, but sometimes it can take several clicks to get what you want. If you’re using a laptop, it also might be a bit tricky using the touch pad. Having a few key shortcuts for the things you do often will never be wasted effort learning.
The Must Haves
Here are a few must have shortcuts that, if you don’t already know about them, you’ll wonder how you ever got by without them!
- CTRL+S : Save the current document
- CTRL+X : Cut the selection for pasting
- CTRL+C : Copy the selection for pasting
- CTRL+V : Paste the copied or cut selection
- CTRL+P : Print the current document
- CTRL+N : Open a new document
- CTRL+O : Open an existing document
- SHIFT+Arrow : Select text
- SHIFT+CTRL+Arrow : Select blocks of text
The Good to Know
The above are really useful when working in a document or spreadsheet, but there are many more useful shortcuts that work for Windows itself. They tend to use the Windows key rather than CTRL on the keyboard. Here’s a few I particularly like.
- Windows+M : Minimise all open windows
- Windows+E : Open file explorer
- Windows+SHIFT+M : Restore all minimised windows
- Windows+TAB : Show all open windows
- Windows+H : Start dictation
- Windows+V : Open the Clipboard to see copied item history
- Windows+Pause : Show computer properties
- Windows+Up Arrow : Maximise the windows (reverse with Down arrow)
- Windows+RightArrow : Maximise the window to the right (also to the left)
- Windows+SHIFT+UpArrow : Stretch the window to the top and bottom of the screen
- CTRL+SHIFT+S : Take a partial screen shot of a webpage
- Windows+period (.) : Open Emoji panel
These are just a few! Find more here
