I was presenting at a workshop, and the teacher was having trouble with her mouse. “Do a Control A,” I said, getting ready to show her how to copy and paste without her mouse. She stared at me as if I’d suddenly started speaking gibberish. I tried again, “Hold down the Control key and then type A.” She did and was astonished to see her entire page highlighted.

“I didn’t know you could do that!” she said.

Keyboard shortcuts are a surprisingly little-known feature. I use them because they’re faster and less distracting than stopping my typing, reaching for a mouse, pulling down a menu, and clicking. Here are some I use often:

Control + A - selects all text in a document
Control + C - copies highlighted text
Control + X - cuts highlighted text
Control + V - pastes copied or cut text wherever the cursor is

Control + B - boldfaces highlighted text
Control + I - italicizes highlighted text
Control + U - underlines highlighted text

Control + F - opens a search box. Type in a word and click “next” — the cursor moves to that word on the page. Works in PDFs, Web pages, and word processing. Very useful when you are searching for something specific.
Shift + arrow key - highlights text as the arrow moves
Alt + Tab - moves between open windows

(For my friends with Macs, I think the same commands work with Apple instead of Control. Let me know.)

Probably the shortcut I have been most grateful for is the Undo shortcut, Control + Z. Whatever you accidentally just deleted, Control + Z will undelete. If you realized your sentence was better before you changed it, Control + Z will restore the original version. It will even go back a few versions if necessary.

Control + Z is the “do over!” cry from our childhood days. If only we had it for some of the other mistakes we made along the way …

Posted Tue, 29 Jan 2008 00:01:55 and filed under Technology, eNotes. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.