Shortcut 1
I've got a confession to make, I don't use keyboard shortcuts nearly as often as I should. So in the past 30 days, I've been experimenting with discovering a large number of shortcuts, and I've found seven, which I think you'll find helpful too.
So let's dive in. How often have you been wanting to grab something and copy it from the web only to put it into a document, or some other maybe note taking tool? Well, you can come in here and paste it, but oh, wait a minute, I didn't want the different formatting.
I didn't want the underlying for the links. I didn't want any of this. How do I get around it? Well, you could right click with your mouse, and select Paste without formatting. But over here, Ctrl + Shift + V is the much faster way.
Now if I use Ctrl + Shift + V on my keyboard, everything comes over in the style and the formatting of the page that I'm on.
If I go back to this website here, even if I'm grabbing something like these bullet points and they had these funny characters here, I'm going to copy it, but I'm going to come down and do Ctrl + Shift + V. Now everything looks clean and matches the formatting I already have in this particular document.
Shortcut 2
Now another problem I have, especially when I'm browsing the web, is coming across a site where the text is either too large or too small. In this case, this text is just a little too large for my liking. Now within my browser, I could come up here to the top right-hand corner and I could adjust the Zoom.
I'm going to take it down to maybe 90%, but there is a much faster way. If I hold the Ctrl key on my keyboard and then use the scroll wheel on my mouse, I can quickly and easily zoom in and out, either by small increments or by very extreme increments if I need to.
You'll notice in the right-hand corner here that it's actually telling me 150%, 110, now I'm back to a 100%,
now I'm back to 90% where exactly I am. But that is certainly the fastest way to zoom in and out. But keep in mind that this also works for other applications. Here I am within my Word document, and let's say that I want to zoom in down below where I'm going to enter in my next paragraph.
Again, holding down Ctrl on my keyboard and then using the Scroll Wheel, it will zoom in. Now the nice thing about the Ctrl zoom shortcut is that it will zoom in on the text cursor which makes the most sense when I'm working with a document here.
You will find if you're using your browser, it will simply zoom in on wherever your mouse cursor is, which is not always the most helpful but you'll get the hang of it, especially depending on the website you're on.
Shortcut 3
Now if you're anything like me, you probably have a number of applications open
at any given time. And you may be used to minimizing or maximizing certain windows, or coming down here to your taskbar and getting to the place that you want to go.
But there's a faster way by using Alt + Tab on your keyboard, you'll be brought up with sort of a mini menu which will show you all of your open applications. Now you can do a couple of different things here.
Number one, you can click on the application you want to go to immediately. So even if I can't exactly see what is Alt open, I can hit Alt + Tab and I can go directly to this picture, for example.
But there's an added benefit. Within this window, I can also close applications. So maybe I don't need my calculator right now and maybe I don't need to see my desktop view here either. So I can go quickly and easily to the applications that I want
and also close others. In addition, when you have the Alt + Tab menu open, keep Alt held down with your thumb, and then you can tap the Tab key and cycle through those different applications. Wherever you release, that will open up that program.
So this can be a quick and easy way to toggle between two or three open applications. Now before we continue with our next shortcut key, I'd love to hear from you, what are some of your favorite shortcuts? Be sure to let me know in the comments down below.
Shortcut 4
Speaking of the Tab key, this next keyboard shortcut is very applicable, especially if you have a number of tabs open within your browser. If you select Ctrl + Tab on your keyboard, it will cycle through to the next tab within your browser.
This can be especially helpful if you just want to jump to the next place without having to use your mouse. I also use this when I am in full screen mode, and I don't want to have to go back and forth between full screen mode.
I find this especially helpful when I'm giving a full screen presentation and I want to move to the next tab on my web browser, but I don't want to show everything on my screen. I want to stay in that full screen mode. So the next time you need to jump to the next one over, just hit Ctrl + Tab on your keyboard.
Shortcut 5
Now I will admit this next keyboard shortcut is not new to me, but I use it so often.
I wanted to make sure that I included it in this list, and that is when you're looking or finding a keyword on any page and in almost any application. Here, I've opened up this article which is talking about a number of things which might drop in price in the the coming year. But maybe I'm only interested in car prices or car related topics.
All I need to do is select Ctrl + F on my keyboard, that's F for find .And in the top right-hand corner, I will have this input dialogue. Now I can type in anything. In this case, I'm going to search for the word car, and it's immediately going to tell me that there are 23 instances of the word car. Now, I can come over here and cycle through.
It's going to show me where that appears next and it will highlight that word as well.
But what might be even more helpful within your web browser are these little highlighted dashes here on the scroll bar. So here you can see, I can scroll directly to this section where the word car is mentioned a number of different times and maybe ignore the rest of the article.
But if I want to go to any other section, I can either use that scroll bar or use the up and down arrow. But remember, you're not limited to using this just within your browser. Here I am within Word, and I'm going to select Ctrl + F. This time, it's going to appear on the left hand side of the screen.
I'm going to type in the word team, and I can see that that appears twice in this document.
So I can go and review, I can replace these words as well if I need to as a next step, a helpful and easy way, especially if you find yourself in an application or a web browser that does not have a search feature.
Shortcut 6
Next, is a shortcut key, especially for Windows users. Now when you have so many different applications and tabs open on the screen, sometimes it can be a challenge
just to go back to the desktop. You may know that you can take your mouse cursor
and drag it all the way down to the bottom and click, and that will return you to the desktop. If I go all the way back to the bottom and click, it will return me to where I was before. But there's a much faster way, if you select the Windows key plus the D key, that will collapse everything on screen and bring you back to your desktop.
If you hit it again, it will return you where you last left off. This has really made me think differently about how I use my desktop rather than using it as just a repository
of different files. I can make this a much more productive space if I make it that much easier for myself to get to. So Windows + D to open or collapse the desktop.
Shortcut 7
Last but not least,
and this is perhaps most important for Windows users, what happens when a program freezes or you can't close it, or you get that not responding message? Well, make sure you know about Ctrl + Alt + Delete. And what that is going to do is going to allow you to access your task manager.
By opening up the task manager, you are going to see every single application and every single background process that is going on at a given time. So for example, if I need to come up here and I need to shut down Microsoft Word, all I need to do is right click and I can select End task.
This is the quickest and easiest way, and sometimes your only resort enforcing a certain application or program to shut down. And don't forget, your task manager is also the place to see what is taking up so much CPU and memory.
And if you want to save even more time while using the Chrome web browser, be sure to click on this video next. It's free, easy to use, and just might change the way you work. And remember, being productive does not need to be difficult. In fact, it's very simple.
