Obscure Windows Shortcuts!

Ahhhhh… keyboard shortcuts, how I love thee! It’s almost always faster to use the keyboard to accomplish something than using a mouse. But while most people are familiar with basic shortcuts like CTRL+C (copy) and CTRL+V (paste), there’s an entire galaxy of lesser known ones out there that you could be using every day. Did you know about CTRL+X (cut)? How about CTRL+Z (undo)? How about CTRL+Y (redo)? Did you know that you can press F2 to rename a file? Well, even if you know all of those, I’m sure that there are a few in this list that you’ve never heard of:

Tab completion – In Windows XP, you can use the tab key as an “auto-complete” at a command-line. For example, you might have several folders in your Program Files directory with “Microsoft” in the name. To quickly change to one of those folders, you can type CD M and press the TAB key to cycle through all the folders that begin with an “M”. WHAT YOU MIGHT NOT KNOW: this also works in the “Run:” box as well. SOMETHING ELSE YOU MIGHT NOT KNOW: this feature is enabled by default in XP; you can enable it in Windows 2000 by opening RegEdit (click Start > Run > regedit > OK) and changing the value of HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\MICROSOFT\Command Processor\CompletionChar to 9.

Built-in Hotkeys – The Windows interface has a built-in hotkeys feature that few (if any) use, although it’s super-duper nifty. If you go to the shortcut properties of any desktop or Start Menu shortcut (right-click > properties > shortcut), you’ll see a box that says “shortcut key” between the boxes that say “Start In:” and “Run”. Simply type a keystroke combination (I use CTRL+SHIFT+O for Outlook and CTRL+SHIFT+F for Firefox) and save your changes. From now on, you can open the program using the keystroke combo you saved!

CTRL+ENTER + Web Browser – I wish everyone knew this shortcut! Internet Explorer was the first to offer this handy feature: to go to a .com website, you only need to type in the domain name itself into the address bar; if you then press CTRL+ENTER, IE will fill in the “http://www.” part at the beginning and the “.com” part at the end. So to get to this website, you only need to type “jimcofer” into the address bar – CTRL+ENTER will turn it into “http://www.jimcofer.com” and begin loading the page. WHAT YOU MIGHT NOT KNOW: this feature not only works in Firefox too, but has been extended: SHIFT+ENTER autocompletes a .net address and SHIFT+CTRL+ENTER autocompletes a .org one. SOMETHING ELSE YOU MIGHT NOT KNOW: you can change the default characteristics for this behavior in IE by creating the following registry key:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Toolbar\QuickComplete

You then need to create this value in the key above: QuickComplete REG_SZ http://www.%s.whatever. So if you live in America (where the default behavior is .com) yet you work almost exclusively on British websites, changing the “.whatever” in the example to “.co.uk” means that CTRL+ENTER will now take you to .co.uk addresses instead. Please note that the contents of the QuickComplete string are limited to 64 characters.

The handiest web browser shortcut – I’ve seen it happen a million times; a user wants to visit a website that he or she has to type in the address for. He or she currently has a page open with a hideously long URL. So what do they do? Move their hand over to the mouse, where they highlight the URL manually. Of course, since the address of the current page is too long to fit into the address bar, they have to delete part of the old address, let the remaining text move into the address bar, highlight that text and delete it… and possibly repeat this two or three times. If all you want to do is type an address into the address bar, simply press the F6 button. This will move the focus to the address bar and highlight all of the text in the URL, regardless of how long it is. Combine this with the CTRL+ENTER shortcut above, and you can save yourself from some serious carpal tunnel syndrome! This shortcut works in IE and Firefox. (Oh, and ALT+D does the same thing, BTW.)

The second handiest web browser shortcut – For some reason, most people don’t know that ALT+LEFT ARROW moves the current browser window backwards and ALT+RIGHT ARROW moves the same forwards. If you already have your hands on the keyboard, this is much faster than moving your hand to the mouse to press the “backward” or “forward” button. This shortcut works in almost every web browser that ever was.

Task Manager – The fastest way to open Task Manager? CTRL+SHIFT+ESC.

Shift+Click on a scrollbar – If you’ve ever had to navigate through an extremely long Word document or web page, you know how painful using the scroll bars can be. But if you already have a good idea of where you want to go in the document, holding down the SHIFT key while clicking on an area in the scroll bar will take you to that area exactly. This is the Windows’ equivalent of middle-clicking a scrollbar in most *nix operating systems.

“No To All” – Have you ever been copying a bunch of files in Windows Explorer and been presented with the “Do you want to overwrite this file?” box? If you’re copying just a few files it’s no big deal, but it can be highly annoying if you’re copying 11,000 files. If you hold down the SHIFT key as you click on the “No” box, Windows will interpret this as “No to all” – saving you all kinds of time (and mouseclicks).

So – how about you? Do you have any obscure Windows shortcuts you’d like to share? If so, send ’em in!

UPDATE: Some more shortcuts:

ALT+ESC – Moves the currently selected window to the background.

CTRL+ARROW – In word processing or text editing programs, moves the cursor an entire word left or right. CTRL+SHIFT+ARROW highlights entire word(s) at a time.

CTRL+C – Pressing CTRL+C while an error message is selected will copy the text of that box to the clipboard. You can then CTRL+V (paste) the text into a Word document, text editor, or email for your IT guys to chew on.

=rand(x,y) – In Word, typing the preceding (where X is the number of paragraphs and Y is the number of sentences) generates random text, which is sometimes helpful for figuring layouts in a document.

ALT+Highlight – In Word, this allows you to highlight text vertically instead of horizontally.

Start . – Working in a command prompt environment and want to quickly open an Explorer window in the current directory? Just type Start . at the command line and it will be done!

SHIFT+* – Want to quickly open all of the subfolders for a drive or folder in the tree view of Windows Explorer? Press SHIFT and the asterisk key and all of the subfolders will magically open. NOTE: it might take some time for Windows Explorer to process this request, especially if you attempt it on a folder with lots of subfolders (such as the “Documents and Settings” folder); hang tight and be patient: Explorer will be back soon!

CTRL+Click – In Firefox and IE 7.0, holding down the CTRL key whilst clicking on a hyperlink makes the link’s window open in a new tab underneath the active page.

The Middle Mouse Button – Have a three-button mouse? In Firefox and IE 7.0, clicking on a tab whilst holding down the middle button (or scroll wheel) closes that tab; holding down the middle button whilst clicking on a link opens that link in a new tab (just like the CTRL+Click tip above).

SHIFT+DELETE – Holding down the SHIFT key when deleting a file or folder bypasses the Recycle Bin. It doesn’t matter if you use right click -> delete or the DELETE key; you will also still be prompted for confirmation before you delete the file\folder.

CTRL+SCROLL – In Internet Explorer and most flavors of Netscape, holding down the CTRL key while moving the scroll wheel increases or decreases the font size, which is good for those sites that insist on using 6.5pt or 96pt fonts!

SHIFT+F3 – In Word, SHIFT+F3 cycles through ALL CAPS, lowercase and Proper Case in highlighted text.

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