Useful keyboard shortcuts
Many of the tasks you can perform in Windows using the standard menus can also be performed using shortcut keystrokes with the keyboard.
Using shortcut keys can be a much quicker way of performing standard commands (such as copying and pasting), and while some people prefer to use the menus others find these shortcuts to be very handy.
The easiest way to find out whether a menu command has an associated keyboard shortcut is to look at the menu itself. The equivalent key combinations are usually displayed next to the command.
The above image is taken from Microsoft Internet Explorer, however all Windows programs show the available shortcuts in this manner.
I will describe some of the most commonly used shortcuts in the following sections:
This information is common for all versions of Microsoft Windows.
Cut, Copy, Paste
These three commands are really handy when creating documents. Using shortcuts can often make them even more useful.
Cut
The shortcut for the Cut command is: Ctrl+x.
(press and hold down the Ctrl key and while it is held down press the x key. Then release both of them).
Example
To cut the second sentence from the document it must first be selected.
Pressing Ctrl+x on the keyboard removes the selected text and places it on the Windows clipboard (a temporary area in Windows where elements can be stored for reuse).
Copy
The shortcut for the Copy command is: Ctrl+c.
(press and hold down the Ctrl key and while it is held down press the c key. Then release both of them).
This is very similar to the cut command, but rather than removing the selection from the document it is just copied to the clipboard.
Paste
The shortcut for the Paste command is: Ctrl+v.
(press and hold down the Ctrl key and while it is held down press the v key. Then release both of them).
This will place the contents of the clipboard into the document at the location of the cursor.
ExampleUsing the example above, we now place the cursor where we want to paste the removed text (in this case at the end of the document).
Then press Ctrl+v...
(if the example had been using the copy command this last sentence would now appear twice. Once in it's original position and once in it's new position at the end of the document)
You should be aware that most of the time the clipboard will only hold one item - therefore if you do two copy commands the second will overwrite the contents of the clipboard and you will be unable to paste the contents of the first.
Later versions of Windows do allow you to store more than one item on the clipboard. However, this is outside the scope of this document.
Selecting Items
There are many situations where you have a number of items from which you want to make a selection. This might be a list of files, a number of cells in a spreadsheet or any other collection of items.
Using shortcut keys it is really easy to select the items you want.
Selecting a single item is easy - you just click on it. However, selecting more than one can be trickier.
Selecting contiguous items
If you want to select a group of items that are all next to each other you can often do it by drawing a box around them with the mouse.
Alternatively, you can use the Shift key.
ExampleIn this example I will use Windows Explorer to select a number of files.
If I want to select all the files beginning with the letter A I would click the first one to select it (as in the diagram above). Then while holding down the Shift key I would select the last file beginning with A:
Selecting non-contiguous items
If you want to select a number of items that are not next to each other you should use the Ctrl key.
ExampleUsing the same example as above, I want to select the first file beginning with A and the first file beginning with B. I first click on the first A file as I did in the previous example.
Then I hold down the Ctrl key on the keyboard and select the first file beginning with B:
If I wanted to select more files I would keep the Ctrl key pressed while I click on the files I want.