Sure you can get around your computer using the mouse to point and click on everything, but sometimes keyboard shortcuts are faster and easier.  One of the biggest benefits is that you’re hands don’t have to leave the keyboard.  Let’s say you’re working on writing a document and need to have some bold text inserted.  You could stop typing, move your hand to the mouse, move the mouse to the “B” icon and click it, move your hand back to the keyboard and type what you need then move back to the mouse to deselect bold (phew) or you can just hit Ctrl-b, type what you need in bold and then hit Ctrl-b to turn off bold.  Simple choice, right?

The biggest reason people don’t use keyboard shortcuts is that they don’t know what the shortcuts are.  The are hundreds of available shortcuts, some that you could use multiple times a day, some that are almost never used unless you’re in a specialized job (I almost never use macros ier

Below is a list of some of the more frequently used shortcuts that I’ve come across.  Most of them are easy to remember (ctrl-n for new, ctrl-o for open, etc) but a handful seem less obvious (ctrl-v for paste??).  Programmers choose the keys for shortcuts for one of two reasons, either to make it easy to remember or to group similar functions together.  The shortcuts for copy, cut, paste, and undo don’t seem to have correlation until you look down.  You can see that they’re all on the bottom left of the keyboard, right next to the ctrl key.  This was designed to make it easy to do all the editing with one hand while you kept your other hand on the mouse or in place on the keyboard.  Also many shortcuts have become system wide standards, so ctrl-c means copy in word, Firefox, Photoshop and every other program.  That means there’s actually a lot less to remember and a lot more to gain by taking a little while to remember these little time savers.

System wide shortcuts:

Ctrl-C copy to clipboard

Ctrl-V paste from clipboard

Ctrl-X cut to clipboard (delete the selection but save it in the clipboard for pasting later)

Ctrl-Z undo

Ctrl-P print

Ctrl-A select all

Ctrl-O open (select file to open prompt)

Ctrl-B set text to bold

Ctrl-I set text to italicized

F5 refresh page/window

Shift-Del delete selected object (file folder) without sending it to the recycling bin)

Shift+ L or R arrow select text one character at a time

Ctrl+ L or R arrow move cursor one word at a time (jump to beginning of previous/next word)

Shift+Ctrl + L or R arrow select text one word at a time

Windows:

Win-M minimize all windows

Win-D show desktop (press Win-D again to show your open windows again)

Win-R open run prompt

Win-E open new windows explorer window

Win-F or F3 open search window

Win-Pause open system properties window

F2 rename selected object

Ctrl-Shift-Esc open task manager

Alt-Tab and Alt-Shift-Tab cycle between open windows

For a full list of shortcuts for windows go to:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/126449

Firefox:

Alt-Home go to homepage

Ctrl-L select the address bar in order to type a url

Ctrl-T open new tab

Ctrl-W close tab/window

Ctrl-N open new window

Ctrl-F open search bar

Ctrl-Tab and Ctrl-Shift-Tab cycle between open tabs

Alt-L or R Arrow move forward and backwards in history

Ctrl- – or + change zoom

F11 full screen mode

For more shortcuts in Firefox go to:

http://support.mozilla.com/en-US/kb/Keyboard+shortcuts

Outlook:

Ctrl-N open new contextually (i.e. if you’re in mail it will open a new message, in calendar new appointment, etc)

Ctrl-R reply to the currently selected message

Ctrl-Shift-R reply to all

Ctrl-F forward message

Hit the link below to see more shortcuts for Outlook:

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/outlook/HP012303961033.aspx

Word:

Most of the system wide shortcuts apply in Word, however here are a couple that are special and only used within Word.

Ctrl-[ or ] grow or shrink the font one point size at a time

Ctrl-L, Ctrl-E, Ctrl-R justify text to the left, canter and right respectively

Ctrl-Shift-8 show all hidden markings (spacing dots, paragraph marks, etc)

There’s a full list of shortcuts in Word here:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/290938

Know any other good shortcuts or want to see more?  Let us know