The one I use constantly is Shift+Tab. Any time Tab advances you forward Shift+Tab goes backwards.
Think about filling out a form online and tabbing from one field to the next, see a mistake, Shift+Tab goes to the previous fields.
Try it out. Click down in the quick reply box below. Hit Tab and watch the cursor go from the reply box to Post Quick Reply to Go Advanced. Now hit Shift+Tab and it’ll go in the other direction.
It also comes in very handy with spreadsheets. Tab goes left to right across the cells, Shift+Tab goes right to left.
And one more thing to add to that. When using a web browser (as long as you’re not in a text field). The space bar acts as a page down key. And, as you may have guessed, Shift+Space is Page Up.
One of my all-time favorites has been the space bar as a play/pause button. I think I had a web browser once that treated that space bar as a page-down key. Nice big target, for when you are not entering text.
Option-leftarrow-Shift to select the word I just [del]misstyped[/del]mistyped so I can quickly redo it without missing a beat. Command-rightarrow to jump to the end of the line (or Command-leftarrow for the start of the line).
Ctrl-Alt-Minus (the Minus on the num pad) makes an em dash in Word. I use this all the time, although it’s probably less useful ever since the Word autocorrect started replacing two dashes with an em dash automatically.
Well, I’ll be. Had no idea this existed. Not sure I usually need that level of granularity, but sometimes at lowest volume, it might be nice to go down a 1/4 step at a time before muting.
That was a common joke in a couple of online flight sims I used to play. E.g.
“Group chat <Ace69>: Hey, how do I raise my landing gear?”
“<various>: Alt-F4”
“System: <Ace69> has disconnected”
Another vote for Alt-Tab to switch back and forth between the last two opened windows.
I don’t actually use this one too often, but I find it especially nifty: Alt-Print Screen will copy just the active window to the buffer, not the whole screen.
Also: F12 to open the HTML editor so I can purge some pages of excessive ads and animated frames by using the Delete Element command.
It may be more convenient to set up an auto-correct rule to correct Jurgen to Jürgen. In Outlook, go to Options -> Mail Options -> Spelling and Autocorrect (under Compose Messages section) -> Autocorrect Options, then add a rule under “Replace text as you type.”
I believe these options are common among all Office products, so once you set it up in Outlook it should work in Word and others.
I also use these custom Autocorrect options to enter special characters, e.g. \diameter to ⌀.
Ctrl <scroll wheel> (i.e. turn the scroll wheel on the mouse while holding down the Ctrl key) does the same, at least on Windows. And this works in most applications, not just browsers.
I can’t speak for all browsers, but all the browser shortcuts I use work in Firefox and in Chrome, for Windows as well as Linux. I suspect that the other popular browsers work the same.
I’ve gone into Outlook and used the Autocorrect Options to make it changed a word that he types into a different word. Actually, it was the first name of his manager that I changed. You can get creative here.
That’s an excellent suggestion, and seeing as how I’m already familiar with Autocorrect, I should have thought of it myself.
This is the one that I came to add. After Ctrl C/V, it’s probably my next most used command. Windows-Left Arrow/Right Arrow make maximize 1/2 the screen size and continue with it again, continues to move it that direction. Windows key - up arrow maximizes that window into the current monitor, and Windows - Down arrow, undocks the window to it’s previous size.
I get really annoyed at how often I hit the Number Lock key on my keyboard and suddenly the numbers don’t work anymore, or worse, I end up editing some other field. My new lap top is even worse, luckily I found a registry edit and now the Num Lock key is disabled. Doesn’t do anything anymore. I’ve never used the number pad for anything other than typing numbers anyway.
