Do you ever get frustrated with how long it takes you to do simple tasks on your computer? Maybe you have trouble finding a tiny button to click with your mouse, or you accidentally click the wrong menu item because your cursor twitched at the last minute, or you find your laptop’s trackpad really hard to use because it’s so different from a mouse.
Incidentally, I had this latter problem for almost a year. I carried around a mouse with my laptop to support my habit, but got frustrated with finding a flat surface to mouse on. Now I’m reasonably trackpad-proficient, but I’m waiting for the day when Apple comes out with a touch-screen laptop.
Oh, sorry, was I just geeking out extremely? Back to our regularly scheduled post: Keyboard shortcuts, baby.
Learning a few simple shortcuts can ease your computing life. Last week’s tip talked about using tabs in your web browser, and the easiest way to do this is with a keyboard shortcut. And there are keyboard shortcuts for all kinds of stuff you do every day — the kind of stuff that you get annoyed at having to repeat.
Here’s an exhaustive list of keyboard shortcuts from Wikipedia. It covers both Windows and Mac (and some operating systems you’ve never heard of). Hint: Open the link in a new tab by pressing Ctrl (Windows) or ⌘(Mac) as you click, and you won’t lose your place on this page. Go ahead. I’ll wait.
Are you back? Are you overwhelmed again because that list was a mile long? That’s OK, you certainly don’t have to learn all of those, and there’s no deadline. Heck, I probably know less than half of them myself. There’s always room for improvement. Take a breath. One step at a time.
I’ll share a quick list of five keyboard shortcuts I use daily:
- ⌘-p (Ctrl-P on Windows): Print (instead of going to the File menu and choosing Print).
- ⌘-o (Ctrl-O on Windows): Open (opens an existing document when you’ve already opened an application, like Word, Excel, or Adobe Reader).
- ⌘-q (Ctrl-Q on Windows): Quit (quits the application instead of having to go to File and choose Quit).
- ⌘-c (Ctrl-C on Windows): Copy. Use this shortcut to copy highlighted text and images. So you can copy a paragraph from a web page, for example. Where does the copied stuff go? Into a hidden file called the “clipboard.” It looks like nothing happened, but your stuff is there, invisible, waiting for you to use the next shortcut…
- ⌘-v (Ctrl-v on Windows): Paste. If you’ve copied something into your clipboard, this shortcut pastes it. So after you’ve copied your paragraph from a web page, you can paste it into a Word doc. I just used this shortcut five times to paste the ⌘symbol.
This week’s heart of the matter: Grab the keys and go! If any of these look useful to you, try to use them a couple of times today (practice, practice, practice). Pick one or two shortcuts to learn, ones that you know will save you time. One or two new shortcuts each week will make a big difference. Not only in your productivity, but in your comfort level with your computer, and satisfaction with what you’re doing. And I’m all for that. How about you?
Until next week!
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Posted by Wendy Cholbi, your friendly neighborhood swim-goggle-wearing technology-to-English translator
