a fundamental guide to computing
by Justin Geigley
Got Shortcuts?
age user.
If you take a little time and learn
a few of these shortcuts, then you can
Have you ever seen
computer too and
someone working on a com- speed around theit, you won’t need a
before you know
puter and they were moving so mouse at all!
fast that you couldn’t tell how they
Before we can do that though, we
were doing what they were doing?
have to establish some terminology.
Chances are good that they were using First up is Ctrl or Control depending
keyboard shortcuts. These shortcuts
on your keyboard. If you look at the
hail back to the era when a mouse
bottom left corner of your keyboard,
meant a small, furry rodent ... and
you will see this one. Second is Alt or
nothing else. Back then, keyboard com- Alternate. This key is located directly
mands were a necessity.
to the left of the space bar. The Tab
These days, just about everything
key is located directly above the Caps
can be done without a keyboard. In
Lock Key. The final one to be sure to
fact, if you have Windows 7 on your
know is called the Windows key. This
computer, you could completely do
key is in between the Ctrl and Alt keys.
without a keyboard if you have a touch It has the Windows logo on it (looks
screen monitor. The problem is that
like a flag with four sections.) To read
moving that little cursor all over the
shortcuts, you simply add all the keys
screen sacrifices speed in order to
together at once. For example, the
make things easier to do for the avershortcut Ctrl+C means to hold the Ctrl
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key and the C key together at the same
time and then release.
Let’s start off with a pretty basic
command that we here at Aurora like
to say is our friend. Ctrl+S will save
whatever it is you are working on. This
one obviously will only work if you are
in a program that allows you to save.
Make sure you hit Ctrl+S before you hit
Ctrl+W. That one will close the document you are working on! Another
pretty basic one is Ctrl+C. If you have
something selected, this command will
copy it. Ctrl+V will paste it where you
want it. If you don’t want to have t wo
copies of the same thing, you can use
Ctrl+X. That shortcut will cut the item
from where it is. Be sure to Ctrl+V then
somewhere. Another pretty important
one is Ctrl+Z. Undo, undo, undo! How
many times has that one gotten me
out of a jam? One more of the really
basic and important ones ... Ctrl+A is
the command for select all. This will
select everything that is in the folder
or document.
Got something that you want
to delete from a folder or from the
desktop but don’t want it to go to the
recycle bin? Shift+Delete permanently
deletes the file or files that are selected.
Do you have lots of programs open at
once? Alt+Tab cycles between those
windows.
When typing, holding the Shift
key while using the arrow keys will let
you select text in different ways. Just
experiment a little bit to get the hang
of it. You can also modify that one by
using Ctrl+Shift while using the arrow
keys.
Hitting just the Windows key will
pop open the Start Menu. Windows+M
will minimize all open windows and
Windows+Shift+M will bring them
all back. Very useful for hiding your
Christmas shopping if someone comes
near you! Windows+E will open My
Computer. Windows+F will search your
computer for a file or folder.
This is just the very tip of the ice
berg when it comes to keyboard shortcuts. Just get used to a few at a time!
Got questions? E-mail justin@
geigley.com or call 574-215-4110.
The Hometown Treasure · Dec. ‘11 · pg 57