We’re going to change direction a little bit for our next few blogs, focusing more on some day-to-day IT skills you can use to improve your efficiency at work.
In this blog, we’ll look at some very useful shortcuts you can use to increase your efficiency at work. These commands will work on pretty much any application you use and some of them (looking at you Ctrl + Z) can be a real life-saver at work.
In our later blogs, we’ll then look in a bit more detail about how some of these shortcuts can be best used, as well as going in to some of the deeper functionality that’s available when using tools like Word, Excel or Outlook, that you might not know about, but which can make a big difference for you.
20 Essential Windows Shortcuts You Should Know
So, let’s get to the point – below are 20 essential keyboard shortcuts that can help save you time in your day-to-day work. Each shortcut has a brief explanation of what it does:
Ctrl + A: Selects all the content on whatever you are looking at. This works in emails, documents, webpages – basically everything.
Ctrl + C: Copy highlighted items to the clipboard.
Ctrl + X: Cut highlighted items to the clipboard. Cut differs from Copy as, whilst Copy will leave the original items where they are, Cut will delete them.
Ctrl + V: Pastes the content you have selected with Copy or Cut.
Ctrl + Z: Undo the last action (and seriously, if you do not know this command, get used to using it – it has saved me a hundred times from accidentally deleting or changing something I did not want to).
Ctrl + Y: Redo the last undone action.
Alt + Tab: Switch between open applications. This can be useful if you have lots of open web pages or applications and cannot find the one you want. Although, if you have so much stuff open that you cannot find things, you should probably think about closing some things down...
Alt + F4: Close the active window (or open the shutdown dialog box if no windows are open). Be careful with this as it does actually close, rather than minimise, the open window.
Ctrl + Shift + N: Create a new folder.
Windows key + D: Minimises all open windows and shows the desktop. Pressing it again will undo this command and open any windows which were minimised.
Windows key + L: Lock your computer. Following on from our previous series on Cyber Security, this is a good one to get into the habit of using, as we all know the risks of leaving our computer unlocked!
Windows key + E: Open File Explorer.
Windows key + I: Open Settings.
Windows key + A: Open Action Center (Action Centre is where stuff like Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connections are managed).
Windows key + S: Open the search bar.
Windows key + PrtScn: Take a screenshot of the entire screen and save it in the Screenshots folder.
Windows key + Shift + S: Open Snip & Sketch (or Snipping Tool, if your computer still uses that instead) to take a screenshot of a portion of the screen.
Windows key + Left/Right arrow: Snap the active window to the left or right side of the screen. This is a fantastically useful way of showing multiple windows on one screen, meaning you don’t have to go through the palaver of swapping between windows.
Windows key + Up/Down arrow: Maximize or minimize the active window.
Ctrl + Shift + Esc: Open Task Manager.
So, is that it?
Well, yes and no. We are not big proponents of saying more than is needed, and hopefully the list of shortcuts and the explanations is a good starting point to increase your knowledge. However, as said at the start, there are a lot of additional functions that sit behind some of these shortcuts, for example the many different options you have for pasting information that you’ve selected via Copy/Cut. In the next blog, we will start looking at some of that next level of usability, to really start unlocking better ways of working.
Contact us
Hopefully, this has been helpful and shown you at least a couple of new shortcuts that you can start using. As always, if you have an IT-related issue, or want to discuss what IT solutions could help your business, check out the services we can offer you on our Services page and drop us a line at contact@mckeownscullin.com.
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