If you’re like me, your experience when you sit down at the computer is more of a ‘point and click’ thing than a ‘carpal tunnel generating’ thing. However, there are times (rare maybe) that I spend a little more time at the keyboard, and I find it irritating to have to scroll through a menu or use the mouse. Franklin gave a pretty comprehensive list for OS X users here, but I don’t have a Mac so it wasn’t as useful for me as it probably was for Steve Jobs. So for the Windows XP users out there (and Bill of course!) I’ve comprised a list of the top 25 keyboard shortcuts that I use just about daily. This is by no means a complete list of shortcuts, just ones that I find pretty handy (he he).
Shortcut |
Result |
Windows |
|
|---|---|
| Ctrl+X | Cut |
| Ctrl+C | Copy |
| Ctrl+V | Paste |
| Ctrl+Z | Undo |
| Ctrl+A | Select All |
| Ctrl+= | Zoom In |
| Ctrl+- | Zoom Out |
| Alt+Tab | Switch between open applications |
| Alt+Esc | Cycles through items in the order that they were opened |
| Alt+(underlined letter of menu) | Opens corresponding menu |
| Ctrl+Alt+Delete | Opens Windows Task Manager |
| WinKey+D | Displays the desktop, press again to return programs |
| WinKey | Displays the Start menu |
| WinKey+L | Locks your computer |
| WinKey+F | Search for files |
Microsoft Word |
|
| Ctrl+= | Changes font to subscript, press again for normal font |
| Ctrl+S | Save your file |
| Ctrl+P | |
| Ctrl+F | Brings up Find Text dialog box |
| Ctrl+I | Italicize text |
| Ctrl+U | Underline text |
| Ctrl+B | Bold text |
Dialog Box |
|
| F1 | Displays the help menu (Also works in Firefox) |
| F4 | Drops down address bar |
| Alt+F4 | Closes dialog box |
I hope these help. If you spend more time at the keyboard and need a more complete list, go here. You will find that some of the commands work in multiple programs, but I just listed them according to the programs I use most. I also don’t know if these shortcuts work in Vista; I’m more comfortable with XP. It’s been my experience that XP works better anyway.