I found out recently that you can copy the text of an error message to the clipboard using ctrl-c (that sound obvious, but it goes against the instinct of needing to select what you are copying first)
I’ve learned a few neat things in recent weeks/months but I wanted to get this post off to a start with just one and give others the space to add theirs (yours)
Any neat tricks you’ve learned recently? Any obscure tricks you think not many people know about (and would benefit from knowing!)
If you’re doing a report in Excel that requires something with multiple lines of text within the same cell, like an address, press ALT + ENTER at the end of each line to generate a new line feed.
So your address (or whatever) looks like:
XYZ Company
123 Main Street
Anytown
Rather than:
XYZ Company 123 Main Street Anytown
To create a screen capture, use FN + PRINT SCREEN to capture; then CTRL + V to paste the picture in another document.
In a UNIX/Linux/OSX (maybe) terminal, pressing CTRL+s (which is relatively easy to press accidentally) will “lock” the terminal; basically, making it look as if no key press does anything and freezing feedback. Press CTRL+q to resume to normal operation.
I was just going to post this one. As a software developer I am always getting screen shots of error messages from our users, except that they use “Print Screen” and send me the entire desktop with a tiny little error message in the middle that I can barely read. Alt+PrintScreen rocks.
You can use Ctrl + Alt + arrow keys to rotate the display. It’s fun to use this one to mess with someone at work who has walked away from their computer without locking the desktop first.
I’ve known these for years, but most people don’t:
In Excel, pressing F4 will repeat the previous command.
In Word, if you highlight text and press SHIFT/F3, it will toggle through to change the capitalization from all lower case to Capitalized to ALL CAPS.
When scrolling down a page, don’t click on the down arrow on the right, which scrolls one line at a time. Click on the space just above the down arrow. That scrolls down a screen at a time. Alternatively, in a web browser, press the Spacebar.
To open a page in a new tab, use the scroll wheel to click on a link. To close a tab, click on the tab with the scroll wheel. Works on MSIE, Firefox, Opera, and Chrome.
In all of my years of working with computers I have not been aware that you could copy error messages in that way. I often Google error messages and I’ve always been frustrated by the fact that you couldn’t select the text. I’ve always ended up retyping the message. It never occurred to me to just hit ctrl-c. Thank you for that tip.
On many terminal emulaters, any keystroke would unlock after Ctrl-S. First time I encountered the other kind, I told manager my terminal had failed and was going home! “Nice try,” he said. “Press ctrl-Q.”
I just discovered that clicking the scroll wheel on a folder full of bookmarks will open ALL of them in new tabs. (I just had to close thirty-seven YouTube links.)
WTF. This is why my terminal mysteriously stops responding to me sometimes? Because I was trying to move the cursor to the beginning of the line and missed ctrl-A?
Thanks, this will surely save me some frustration down the line now that I know I just need to unlock it with ctrl-Q.
If you want to save a pic off a web page but is blocked with some kind of copyright guard, or is part of a flash window, you can use a couple of alternate methods.
This works in Foxfire. Don’t know if it works in IE.
R-click on a white part of the page
Click View Page Info.
Click the Media tab.
It will show a whole list of the images on that page, and clicking on a list item shows the image on the space below. Hunt for the one you want then click Save As.
This method should work for any browser on a PC:
Hit Print Screen on your keyboard.
Go to Start>Programs>Accessories>Paint.
Paste with cntl-v or Edit>Paste.
This gives you the entire screen. You can delete the area outside the pic you don’t want by using the rectangle selection tool (upper right on the toolbar). Click-and-drag around the picture border, then select Image>Crop.
Even using a browser without a media tab, you can hunt through the html source and look for the filename. It can be a bit of a pain but you should be able to find it eventually. I had to do this a few times at work when I only had access to IE 6.