Put Down Your Mouse
Hotkeys, I have to say I love them. They are a great way to speed up your productivity and get work done faster. I use them all the time on my Window’s machine. Basic hotkeys that most of you are probably familiar with are:
Ctrl + Alt + Delete = Opens your Windows Task Manager.
Alt + F4 = Closes your current Window.
Alt + Tab = Shifts between your Windows.
Most Applications:
Ctrl + C = Copy, Ctrl + V = Paste, Ctrl + Z = Undo, Ctrl + P = Print,
Ctrl + S = Save, Ctrl + F = Find
Learning new hotkeys is an excellent way to increase productivity, as they are almost always faster then using your mouse and manually performing the operation. From my experience, you can navigate at least 3-5 times faster by using Hotkeys rather then moving your mouse. Here are a few less common hotkeys that I recommend:
Windows Button + D: The windows button is the button that looks like this:
Press Windows + D will minimize all your windows and bring you to your desktop. Performing the same action again, will restore your previous configuration.
Windows Button + Shift + M = Maximize all windows.
Alt + Spacebar + X = Maximizes your current window.
Alt + Spacebar + R = Restores your window to its previous form.
For Geeks:
Windows Button + E: Opens Window’s Explorer. This is a quick way to access system files.
Windows Button + Pause/Break = Opens your System Properties.
Windows Button + R = Opens Window’s Run command.
Windows Button + L = Lock your system.
Feel free to post your personal favourites.
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1:32 pm
I have been a hotkey fanatic ever since I watched a mentor of mine at my first job after university work his Excel spreadsheets on his laptop entirely with hotkeys. Things moved so fast I was in awe!
My all time favourite is F2 which is very handy for renaming files, and getting to the edit of an Excel cell.
Oh, and don’t forget ESC…it has to be the original hotkey that is a saviour for many actions that you know right away you shouldn’t be doing.
1:07 pm
Just a couple I use:
I use firefox and often have many tabs open and like to close them easily:
Ctrl + W – closes open tab
You mentioned maximizing windows but I always need to minimize the windows to get to the shortcuts on my desktop so:
Windows Button + M = Minimize all windows. or
Windows Button + D = Show desktop.
10:22 am
Hi Ryan,
Thanks for the FireFox short-cut. I typically use IE 6,0, so I find it very handy to hold “SHIFT” down when clicking on links that I want to pop-up in a new window. I also find Ctrl + N for opening a new window second-nature to me.
I find Windows Button + M less useful, because Windows Button + D does the same thing with the added bonus of restoring all the windows to their original positions.
Cheers,
2:08 pm
CTRL + T – has got to be my favorite.
CTRL + W – going to introduce it to the mix. Thanks.
9:46 am
Note quite a hot key, but check out Bayden systems SlickRun.
This allows you to create shortcuts for anything – so I now have 2 char codes for all my apps. You just hit Windows Key + Q, then type the code you defined.
ie=Internet Explorer,
ol=Outlook,
ex=Excel
1:39 pm
[...] few months ago, I made a blog post about improving your productivity with hotkeys. This week, I’ll show you how to increase your productivity by increasing your mouse pointer [...]
7:33 am
Some of my favourites are Alt Tab to tab through menus, Alt and the associated underlined letter in windows apps, also Alt D in IE to get to the address bar to type in your URL. Also typing in your url via Start > Run
9:13 am
Hi Stewart,
That’s useful. I think some keyboards can be programmed as well. Mine comes with some buttons to automatically bring up IE and Outlook although I don’t use them much.
Hi James,
Don’t forget to use Windows Button + R to bring up the RUN window instead of moving your mouse to the start menu. You can also access the start menu with Ctrl + Esc.
Cheers,
-Daniel T
9:38 am
Other hotkeys that I look for
Ctrl-A : select all
A hotkeys tidbit (heard from a mentor WAYYY back):
Do you know why apple selected the original cut copy paste hotkeys keys they did?
(it was apple x,c,v)
-C: because it was the first letter of Copy
-X: because it looked like scissors
-V: because it was beside the C and the X
I dont’ know if it is true, but it makes for a good story…
9:45 am
Hi Dave,
Nice story. I use Ctrl-A a lot for word-processors and file management.
I have never related the letter X to scissors, but now that you mention it…
Another reason why they might have decided on those letters is that they are the closest letters to the Ctrl key. It would be difficult to do a Ctrl+P for pasting unless you use your right Ctrl key and right hand.
-Daniel T