Spending your entire day in front of the computer? Fed up of using the mouse for every little operation you perform on the computer? If yes, here is the list of 10 highly useful keyword shortcuts that would help you in minimizing your work time and accomplish simple tasks without touching the mouse.
Opening and Closing New Tabs in Your Browser
Every time you open up your browser, you need to open up new tabs to open various websites like Google, Facebook, Twitter, Pintrest, etc. While opening these websites in new tabs of your web browser, you need to take help of your mouse to open up a new tab.
Opening and closing of new tabs in your web browser becomes easier with some special keyboard shortcuts. Pressing Ctrl + T helps you open up a new window whereas Ctrl + W helps you in closing the existing window.
If you need to close the entire browser, you can just press Ctrl + Shift + W and the entire browser gets closed. For many browsers, this action can give you a warning message to confirm whether you want to go with the action.
Similarly, if you want to undo a closed tab, you can use the shortcut Ctrl + Shift + T to reopen the recently closed tab. By using this shortcut repetitively will help you open all the recently closed tabs in sequence.
Increasing and Decreasing the Font Size in Word
If your work usually includes a lot of documentation or creating presentations, this keyboard shortcut will help you to the core. While preparing documents, you often need to change the font size for titles, sub-titles or headings.
Taking help of mouse for this task sometimes becomes very time consuming. Thus, to save your time and help you work efficiently, Word offers you simple keyword shortcuts to increase and decrease the font size.
Pressing Ctrl + [ helps you in decreasing your font size by 1 whereas using Ctrl + ] helps in increasing your font size by 1. However, if you want to increase or decrease a particular text using these shortcuts, don’t forget to select that text before you actually use these keyboard shortcuts.
Switching between the Different Windows
This keyboard shortcut is solace for people who perform multi-tasking or need to work on more than one document simultaneously. A simple keyboard shortcut – Alt + Tab helps you to toggle between the windows.
Holding down the Alt key and pressing the Tab key once, opens up a small horizontal bar with a list of all the available windows. You can select one of the window from this list by using the Tab key while still pressing the Alt key. Once you select the desired window, all you need to do is leave the Alt key.
Similar to the windows, you can even toggle between your browser tabs by using a simple keyboard shortcut – Ctrl + Tab. This helps you to switch to the next available tab in sequence.
Opening Two Parallel Windows
Many a times, you use your browsers to carry out some research and use a notepad or word document to jot down your points. In such cases, toggling between the windows becomes a bit tedious task.
If you are performing a research and noting down the points simultaneously, you can make use of the parallel windows. To keep two windows parallel all you need to do is open the desired window and press Windows + Left Arrow Button. The window aligns itself to the half left screen.
Similarly, open the other window which you want to work on simultaneously and press Windows + Right Arrow Button. The window aligns itself to the right half screen thus helping you work on tow windows side-by-side.
Deleting Files
Deleting files is as simple as that and even a novice person knows how to delete a file. Then why am I mentioning this shortcut in this list? Ok! Let me answer that question. Usually, deleting the files can be done in two ways, normal deletion and permanent deletion.
In normal deletion you select a particular file that you do not want and hit the delete button on the keyboard. By this task, all your computer does is, move that file from the current location to the Recycle Bin. You can restore this file anytime from the Recycle bin.
On the other hand, in permanent deletion you completely erase the file from your hard disk leaving no option to restore it. To delete your file permanently all you need to do is press Shift + Delete simultaneously. This will give you a warning dialogue box, selecting Ok will erase the file permanently from your computer.
Finding Word Count
If you are using Word, you may often find the word count for your document at the left hand bottom of your worksheet. However, if you’re looking for something in detail like the character count or number of characters, paragraphs, lines, pages, etc. you can make use of the shortcut – Alt + T + W.
Pressing Alt + T + W will open up a small window that gives your detailed report about every character as well as space used in your document.
Minimizing all the Windows and Locking Your Computer
The Windows button on your keypad works more than mere opening the start menu. The combination of this key with other keys helps you in performing several amazing tasks. For example, if you want to minimize all the open windows and go to the desktop, all you need to do is press Windows key + D. This operation minimizes all the windows in one go and takes you to the desktop.
Another effective use of this key is to lock your computer whenever you are leaving it all alone without shutting it down. You can use the keyboard shortcut Windows + L to lock down your computer thus avoiding any unauthorized use of your PC.
Selecting Text in a Word Document
Reading the title, all you must have thought of is the keyboard shortcut Ctrl + A which helps you in selecting the entire document. However, have you ever wondered how to select a group of words, a single line or a paragraph without touching your mouse?
Selecting text is much easier with keyboard shortcuts that using the mouse. Making use of the Shift key + Home key helps you select the entire text from the cursor point to the start of that row/line. On the other hand, using Shift key + End key helps you in selecting the entire text from the cursor point to the end of that particular line/row.
Similarly, you can make use of the Shift key along with the arrow keys to select a series of words, lines or even paragraphs.
Important Keyboard Shortcuts for PowerPoint
PowerPoint is another widely used application and usually requires great use of mouse for some or the other task. Here are a few keyboard shortcuts for PowerPoint that will help you while making a presentation.
Toggling between the slides sometimes become quite difficult if the number of slides in your presentation are greater. In such cases, pressing the number of slide along with the Enter key will take you to that particular slide. For example: 4 + Enter key will take you to slide number 4.
Want to add a new slide to your presentation? No need to touch the mouse. Pressing Ctrl + M will help you in creating a new slide and pressing F4 will repeat all your last actions to this new slide. Moreover, if you want to show your presentation to someone all you need to do is hit F5 which will start your presentation from the first slide. On the other hand if you want to start your presentation from the current slide, you can use the keyboard shortcut – Shift + F5.
Important Keyboard Shortcuts for Excel
Excel is a huge application in itself and comprises of several shortcuts. However, some of the widely used and important keyword shortcuts for excel include – Ctrl + Page Up to toggle between the worksheets from left to right and Ctrl + Page Down to toggle between the worksheets from right to left.
Inserting a worksheet becomes simpler by using the keyboard shortcut Alt + Shift + F1.
Understanding your keyboard and the shortcuts available will help you in accomplishing your tasks more effectively and efficiently. They not just help you in saving your time but also in meeting accurate results.
Hope the above keyboard shortcuts help you in all possible ways. Do you know some other keyboard shortcuts that would help in smart work? If yes, please mention them in the below comments.
