Posts Tagged ‘shortcut’

We’re assuming that most of you currently reading this, will currently have your right arm outstretched, clutching an oval(ish) shaped piece of plastic, which is attached by a cable to your PC. Naturally there will be some of you who are ‘left handed’, and the ‘flashier’ amongst you may even have a wireless mouse… but you get the general idea.

When we first started using computers, there was no such thing as a ‘mouse’. If you wanted to ‘get something done’ in an application, you would need to learn to use a series of keyboard shortcuts (does anyone remember Word Perfect for example?). We often considered this to be a bit of a pain (you had to remember the key combinations after all).

In the last couple of years few years however, we’ve ‘gone back’ to keyboard shortcuts. Yes, they do take a little time to learn, but they can really boost your productivity. Rather like driving a car, once you learn them, they simply become second nature.

With practice you will find it much faster (and easier) to use shortcuts (e.g. ‘CTRL + C’ and ‘CTRL + V’) than remove your hands from the keyboard and mess around with the mouse (e.g. ‘Edit, copy, edit paste’).

Our recommendation is that you a learn a few shortcuts at a time, and build up your knowledge as time goes on. You can find a nice list of (over 200) shortcuts, covering a range of applications at Smashing Magazine:-

Smashing Magazine

Image by Digital Shotgun

Some people love Microsoft Outlook. Some hate it. Many have to use it whether they like it or not! Whichever camp you fit into, if you use Outlook on a regular basis, it’s worth learning a few keyboard shortcuts. Not only will you impress your office colleagues, but you will save quite a bit of time in the process.

For example, let’s imagine you receive a verbal request from a colleague, and want to enter a reminder in your ‘task list’. If you use (let’s call it) ‘mouse only’ navigation to compose a new task, you will need to click on the ‘tasks’ tab, then ‘file’, then ‘new task’ (a two or three stage process). The quick and easy alternative would be to press CTRL + Shift + K… which will open a new task whichever screen you’re in.

It might take a few minutes to learn some of these shortcuts, but the time saved usually far outweighs the time taken. In fact after a while they just become second nature. Below are a few other Outlook shortcuts that you might want to try:-

Ctrl + Shift + K ….. creates a new task
Ctrl + Shift + N ….. creates a new note
Ctrl + Shift + M ….. creates a new e-mail message
Ctrl + Shift + A ….. creates a new appointment

The version of Outlook we use (2007) actually lists the shortcuts within the ‘drop down’ menu (look under ‘file’ on the menu bar at the top of the screen).

When using Microsoft applications (including Internet Explorer) you can press and hold the ‘CTRL’ key, followed by the ‘F’ key to bring up a search dialogue box. We’ve been using this ’shortcut’ for several years, and we assumed that most people already knew about it. A recent meeting with one of our clients however, revealed that they were unaware of the command (they stated that they will find it really useful in the future). The trick works particularly well when searching through long lists (such as in Excel or Word).