Making IT work… keyboard shortcuts
As well as improving your typing skills, you can save time using keyboard shortcuts. These are combinations of more than one key pressed simultaneously. These help speed up your productivity significantly, especially for repetitive tasks.
When you have finished typing or creating a report, presentation or diagram, you probably drag the mouse cursor to the ‘File’ menu, click on it and then press ‘Save’. You then move the mouse cursor to a new location on the screen. This all takes time, and some people find the mouse fiddly. All you are trying to do is save the document. Pressing the ‘Control key’, which is labelled ‘Ctrl’ and the ‘S’ key simultaneously achieves the save result and is much quicker. When you get familiar with the physical location of these two keys, you will be able to save a document single handed.
Printing a document is easy too. Just press ‘Ctrl’ and ‘P’ simultaneously. In software documentation this is normally written as Ctrl+P.
Useful shortcuts
On a PC or laptop device running a Microsoft Operating System, the following shortcuts are really useful, and I guarantee these will save you time each day:
Ctrl+Z undo
Ctrl+Y redo
Ctrl+X cut
Ctrl+C copy
Ctrl+V insert
Ctrl+P print
Ctrl+S save
Ctrl+N new
Save time editing
When you are editing a document, you might change your mind over the last few edits or words inserted. Instead of highlighting text and deleting it, press Ctrl+Z, which is undo. If you then realise that the text was ok, then you can redo the edits by Ctrl+Y. That is a really clever capability. Have a go!
Windows key
On a PC or laptop there is usually a ‘Windows’ key. This is also really useful, and is used in combination with other keys. For example, Windows+D shows your desktop. Press it again and it returns the view back to where you started out.
There are literally hundreds of shortcut combinations, which perform a single action.
And finally…
Windows+L. This is my favourite, and is an essential tool in your cyber crime prevention toolbox.