Windows Keyboard Shortcuts

Windows Keyboard Shortcuts! by Bill Dudley

updated: May 2006

WHY KEYBOARD SHORTCUTS? For me, there are a number of good reasons: prolonged mousing hurts my hand; I don't like having to move one hand away from the keys; and it often seems stupid and entirely too 'twiddly' to stop what I'm doing, grab the mouse, move it around to locate the cursor on the screen, then fish around to find a pull-down menu or a little tiny box in the upper corner of a window, and then finally click the "x" or some other button. Think about the time you've wasted over the years doing this! It's gotta be easier and quicker to just press two keys, especially if you can do it with one hand. Maybe you already know all or some of these shortcuts. If not, be prepared to save a significant amount of time and effort, and maybe impress your friends with your computer skills!

So, here are the ones I use most:

1. To close the window you're working in:

hold down ALT and press F4 ( from now on we'll write this as ALT-F4) - this is also the way to begin to shut down most computers.
To switch between different programs running in open windows: ALT-TAB. This one tip will save you hours!

Other ALT commands:

ALT-F, S (ALT-F, then S) saves a file and overwrites the earlier version of it;
ALT-F, A allows you to save it and name it as a new file.
ALT-F, P prints the document or in IE, the page you're looking at.
ALT-F, O (that's the letter "O") opens the list of files. (Try this: In many windows programs, just pressing CTRL-O opens the file list.)
ALT-SPACEBAR for resizing the window you're working in. Then, hit an "r" to make it small; hit an "x" to make it full screen

Some CTRL commands are

CTRL-A: Select all: highlights everything in that window;
CTRL-C copies a selected area into the "clipboard," (the place where stuff goes when it's copied);
CTRL-D deletes a selected area;
CTRL-V pastes what’s in the clipboard,
CTRL-Z undoes what you last did.

AND here's a real time-saver:

WORD and many other Windows programs remember what files you worked on recently in the "File" drop-down menu. So, hit ALT-F and you'll see at the bottom of the menu a list of recent files. Then just type the number of the file to open it.

Now, here are the magical WINDOWS KEY SHORTCUTS:

1. To bring up the WINDOWS start menu, just press the WINDOW key, if you've got it. If you don't have such a key, consider spending 20 bucks on a newer keyboard [I bought a nice one at Big!Lots for $5.99] - OR - try hitting CTRL-ESC, and you'll get the start menu. To dump the start menu hit ESC.

2. To instantly start windows Explorer, press WINDOW-E.

3. To instantly start Find, press WINDOW-F [When you're in Explorer, just hit F3 to open Find instantly]

4. To see your desktop at any time, press WINDOW-D, or WINDOW-M. [all your open windows will be minimized. ALT-TAB gets them back, one by one.]

5. In Windows XP, hit WINDOWS, U, U, to shut down the computer fast…

6. Here's my favorite: In Windows XP, you can right click on any of the start menu icons and RENAME THEM to start with different letters. Why do this? (you're actually only naming the shortcuts to them) Then you can hit the WINDOW key and then the first letter of the program and Windows will instantly run that program. Try to make each program the only one that begins with that particular letter, or you'll have to also select the program and then hit ENTER. (if there are two things with that letter, you must hit the letter twice to get the second one.) On the desktop, you can start any program with a desktop icon by hitting the first letter of the name of that icon, then ENTER (if there are two things with that letter, you must hit the letter twice to get the second one.) (If you lose sight of your desktop, just press WINDOW-M or WINDOW-D

[On older Windows versions you go to: START MENU/PROGRAMS/TASKBAR/START MENU PROGRAMS/ADVANCED]

HERE ARE SOME "F" COMMANDS YOU CAN USE:

1. Hit F2 to rename any file or icon that you have selected. It's much faster than clicking twice slowly. ESC cancels the operation.

2. Hit F5, "refresh" to instantly update a listing or screen to see, for instance, changes made by program running in another window

3. In Internet Explorer: F6 highlights the address line. No more highlighting it by dragging over the address with your mouse [very annoying]

4. In Internet Explorer: F11 makes the browser FULL SCREEN. Works in Windows Explorer too! Right click on the little toolbar at the top of IE and select "autohide" to make it go away.

OTHER STUFF:

1. TAB is great for moving between sections (or frames or links) of a program like Internet Explorer.

2. To see which programs are running, hit ALT-CTRL-DELETE once. You'll see a box that lists them all (and you may be amazed at how much junk is running that you don't even know about.) Now you can turn off the ones that you don't need, although it may be hard to identify some of them, so be careful. To close the box, hit ESC.

3. On an older computer, to reboot just Windows, but not the whole system, hit ALT-F4 until you get the shutdown dialog box. Select "Restart the Computer" and hold SHIFT and hit ENTER.

That's it for now. Hope some of these make a difference for you. Meanwhile, if I hear of any more, I'll put them here.

Check out the Windows Annoyances Page

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