Small Business Tech

If you are a Microsoft Office user, have you ever wondered if there is an easier way to do things? Some things just take too many mouse clicks and some of the options are too buried in the menu options and it feels like a bit time waster. A great time-saving feature is using shortcut keys.

Shortcut keys are using the keyboard to do commands that are found in menu options or on toolbars.

Below are some shortcut keys that you may like to use to save a little time. Hold down the Ctrl (Control) key and tap the other key to utilize shortcut keys.

Shortcut Key	Action
Ctrl + Home	Takes you to the very top of your document, spreadsheet, or screen
Ctrl + End	Takes you to the very bottom of your document, spreadsheet, or screen
Ctrl + A	Selects everything in your document
Ctrl + C	Copies the selected text or object
Ctrl + V	Pastes what you have copied
Window Key + M	Minimizes all open windows on your screen
Ctrl + Z	Undo
Ctrl + Y	Redo
F5	Refresh
Ctrl + Tab	Switches between open tabs in Internet Explorer (IE)
Ctrl + T	Opens a new tab in IE
Ctrl + W	Closes a tab in IE
Ctrl + D	Adds a favorite into your Favorites folder
F11	Go to full screen view in IE, to get out of full screen view, tap the F11 key again.

Screen Tips

The biggest challenge in using shortcut keys is remembering them!

Below is a way that you can have Microsoft Word 2003 show you the shortcut keys for any given toolbar button (if they exist):

1. Choose Tools, then Customize.
2. When the Customize multi-tabbed dialog box appears, choose Options.
3. Check “Show shortcut keys in Screentips”.
4. Press Close.

Now, if you move your mouse over the Spelling and Grammar toolbar button (it looks like the letters “ABC” over a checkmark), Word tells you that you can press F7 to activate this feature.

Opening hyperlinks in a new window or tab

Have you ever gone to a webpage and clicked on a link expecting it to open up in another window so you can keep the first page open and the link opens on the same page? If you have that happen to you, just go back to the previous screen either by clicking the back button or by pressing the Backspace key and then hold the SHIFT key down and click on the link. Your link will now open in a new window just like you wanted.

If you would rather have the link open in a new tab, follow the same steps except instead of holding the SHIFT key down, hold the CTRL key down. Your link will now open in a new tab.

Note:  All of these were tested in Office 2003 and IE 7.

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Tags: microsoft, office, shortcut

This entry was posted on Friday, August 29th, 2008 at 4:46 pm and is filed under software. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.