IT @ ISM Tech Think Blog

Here’s a list of ways to save time when using Microsoft Word (and many of the hints work for other Office programs as well). If you spend a little bit of time practicing and learn by heart a number of these keyboard shortcuts, you can significantly increase your efficiency working with Office programs (and Windows in general), as you don’t have to move your hands off the keyboard to click with the mouse the whole time.

How many of these tips and tricks do you know?

• Ctrl + O = Open (a document)
• Ctrl + S= Save (the currently open document)
• Ctrl + A= Select all (contents of the currently open document, file, webpage…)
• Ctrl + V = Paste (whatever was last copied or cut)
• Ctrl + F = Find
• Ctrl + H = Find and Replace (If you are working on a big document and realize you’ve misspelled a word throughout, you can fix all the mistakes in one go. For example, if you’ve written my name throughout as “Stale”, you can replace it in one go with the correct spelling, i.e. “Ståle”. This also works for multi-word expressions, such as “and - or”, to be replaced by “and/or”.)

The following apply to whatever text or images have been selected:

• Ctrl + C = copy
• Ctrl + X = cut
• Ctrl + I = italics (text)
• Ctrl + B = bold (text)
• Ctrl + U = underline (text)
• Ctrl + E = center (text or otherwise)

Have you ever noticed that the words on the menu bar have one letter underlined, e.g. “File”? If you hold down the Alt key and press F, it will open the File menu. Keeping the Alt key down, press A on the keyboard, and the program will open the Save As dialog box, as that is the option with the letter A underlined in the File menu.

Really useful hints for multitaskers:

If you have 10 different windows open, and want to go to the desktop quickly, it takes a long time to minimize each window. A quicker way is to hold down the Windows key (between the Ctrl and Alt keys down in the bottom left corner of the keyboard) and press D. (Strictly speaking this is a Windows shortcut, not Word or any other Office program).

Another useful one for multitaskers is the Alt + Tab combination, which lets you switch between all the open windows. If you are browsing the web, writing an email and working on a spreadsheet at the same time, you can switch between programs using this combination. Students frequently use this when they don’t want teachers (or parents) to see what they were really doing on the computer immediately before you started heading towards them.

Image: http://www.sxc.hu/photo/713537