Most professionals have been working with electronics for at least a decade. Over this decade, they’ve developed their own techniques for getting from Point A to Point B. Many of these techniques involve using a mouse or touchscreen, but you can save valuable seconds by keeping your fingers on your keyboard. Those seconds add up to minutes which, over the course of the year, can increase your overall productivity.
The key to making keyboard shortcuts a part of your daily routine is repetition. Some of these steps are repeated day after day, so finding a quicker way to commit these actions will be a huge productivity-booster.
Save:
If you’ve ever lost thirty minutes of work due to a sudden power outage or computer crash, you know the importance of saving your work often. There are two keyboard shortcuts for save: Control + S and Alt + F + S. Control + S is the easiest of the two. Hit those two keys every few minutes and you’ll be safeguarded against sudden surprises.
Copy/Cut/Paste:
If you’re often required to copy and paste sections of text from one document to another, these shortcuts are vital. To copy text, highlight it and choose Control + C. For cut, the keyboard shortcut is Control + X. Once your text is on the clipboard, you can then use Control + V to paste that text.
Open File:
To open a file in Microsoft Word, choose Control + O.
Print:
Control + P will pull up the print dialogue box to allow you to make your print selections.
Select All:
On occasions, you’ll need to highlight everything in a document to change the font, spacing, or make other changes to all of the copy you’ve created. Control + A highlights everything.
Highlight:
To highlight chunks of text using your keyboard, hold the Shift key down and move around using your arrow keys. To highlight one word at a time, hold Shift + Control and use the arrow keys to move left or right.
Form Fields:
When you’re working with form fields, you may already know that you can move from one field to another using your Tab key. But did you know that you can move backward by using the Shift + Tab combination?
Return to Desktop:
This is especially important in Windows 8, where users find themselves constantly asking, “Where is my desktop.” In any version of Windows, you can return to your desktop by hitting the Windows button in the bottom right corner of your keyword and the D key. In Windows 8, you can also use the Windows key alone to return to your tiles.
Web Address:
If you’re visiting a site that ends in .com, you can simply enter the company name and hit Control + Enter. Both “www” and “com” are added automatically. As you type information into your address bar, you can also use your arrows to scroll through the list of autocomplete options.
Go to Your Homepage:
In most browsers, Alt + Home will take you to your own homepage.
With each of these shortcuts, practice will turn it into a habit. Pick one task you use often and spend a day training yourself to use keyboard shortcuts instead of mouse clicks. Soon you’ll find you’re typing without thinking, saving yourself time and energy as you work.
