10 Keyboard Shortcuts Everyone Should Know
I believe I heard somewhere that a stitch in time saves nine. I wasn’t sure if I had the quote right, so I looked it up in Google Search. According to The Idioms, one of their meanings is, “small action taken on right time prevents difficulty to be bigger later.” Well, I’m here to tell you that using these top 10 keyboard shortcuts will definitely save you a stitch in time.
I cannot tell you how many times I use keyboard shortcuts to greatly increase my productivity, reduce repetitive strain, and help keep me focused. You can too. Want to see how? Let’s take a look at the top 10 best keyboard shortcuts.
Keyboard Shortcuts Rated Among Top 10
One of the first examples is to copy text, you can highlight text and press the Ctrl+C shortcut. The shortcut is so much faster than moving your hands away from the keyboard, highlighting your word or words with the mouse, right-clicking, choosing copy, and returning to the keyboard.
Get ready to memorize and use the top 10 keyboard shortcuts we recommend that I list below.
- Ctrl+C or Ctrl+Insert and Ctrl+X
Both Ctrl+C and Ctrl+Insert will copy the highlighted text or a selected item. If you decide you want to cut an item instead of copying it, press Ctrl+X. This action removes the text or item and stores it in the clipboard, rather than copying it to the clipboard.
Apple computer users can substitute the Ctrl key for the Command key on their computers. For example, pressing Command+C copies highlighted text.
- Ctrl+V or Shift+Insert
Both the Ctrl+V and Shift+Insert will paste the text or object that’s stored in the clipboard.
On Apple computers, use Command+V instead.
Practice
Cut or copy this text
Use the above text input fields to highlight the “Cut or copy this text” text and press either Ctrl+C to copy or Ctrl+X to cut the text. Once cut, move to the next field and press Ctrl+V or Shift+Insert to paste the text. For further demonstration, visit the following link.
How to copy and paste text in a document or another program.
- Ctrl+Z and Ctrl+Y
Pressing Ctrl+Z will undo any change. What I mean is, if you cut text, pressing this key combination will undo the cut. These shortcuts can also be pushed multiple times to undo or redo multiple changes. Pressing Ctrl+Y would redo the undo.
On Apple computers, use Command+Z and Command+Y to undo and redo.
Practice
Cut or copy this text
Use the above text input field to highlight some or all the text and then press Ctrl+X to cut the text. Once the text has disappeared, press the Ctrl+Z to undo the cut.
TIP
If you did the first example as well (cut and paste text) and you continue to press Ctrl+Z, it will undo that change.
- Ctrl+F and Ctrl+G
Pressing Ctrl+F opens the Find field. This allows you to search the text currently displayed in any program that supports it. For example, Ctrl+F can be used in your Internet browser to find text on the current page. Press Ctrl+F now to open the Find in your browser and search for “shortcut” to display each time shortcut is mentioned on this page. This shortcut can also be used in applications like Microsoft Word, Internet Explorer, Excel, and others.
On Apple computers, use Command+F to find.
Ctrl+G may be used to repeat a search (from using Ctrl+F) in a document or on a web page.
- Alt+Tab or Ctrl+Tab
Pressing Alt+Tab switches between open programs moving forward. Let me give you an example. If you have your browser window open and other programs running in the background, press and hold Alt, then press the Tab key to cycle through each open program.
I have found this works really well if you are in Zoom and have your window full screen. Using the Alt+Tab key works very well.
On Apple computers, instead of using the Alt key use the Command (Cmd) key. For example, Command+Tab to switch between open programs.
BONUS TIP
Press Ctrl+Tab to switch between tabs in a program. For example, if you have multiple tabs open in your Internet browser, press Ctrl+Tab to switch between them.
BONUS TIP
Adding the Shift key to Alt+Tab or Ctrl+Tab moves backward. For example, if you are pressing Alt+Tab and pass the program you want to use, press Alt+Shift+Tab to move back to that program.
BONUS TIP
Windows Vista, 7, 8, and 10 users can also press the Windows key+Tab to switch through open programs in a full screenshot of the window.
- Ctrl+Backspace and Ctrl+Left or Right arrow
NOTE: The following keyboard shortcuts are for PC users only and do not work on Apple computers.
Pressing Ctrl+Backspace deletes a full word at a time instead of a single character.
Holding down the Ctrl while pressing the left or right arrow moves your cursor one word at a time as opposed to one character at a time.
If you want to highlight one word at a time, hold down Ctrl+Shift, then press the left or right arrow key. Your highlighted selection moves one word at a time in that direction.
>> Here is an example text to help demonstrate how you can delete multiple words at a time using Ctrl+Backspace. Click anywhere and then press Ctrl+Backspace to delete one word at a time instead of one character.
- Ctrl+S
While working on a document or another file in almost every program, pressing Ctrl+S saves that file. Use this shortcut key frequently when working on anything important in case of an error, lost power, or any other issues causing you to lose work since the last save.
On Apple computers, use Command+S to save a file.
- Ctrl+Home or Ctrl+End
Ctrl+Home moves your cursor to the beginning of the document, and Ctrl+End moves the cursor to the end of a document. These shortcuts work with most documents, and web pages.
On Apple computers, use the Command+Up arrow to get to the beginning or Command+Down arrow to get to the end of a document or text.
- Ctrl+P
Ctrl+P is used to open a print preview of the page or document currently being viewed. For example, press Ctrl+P now to view a print preview of this page.
On Apple computers, use Command+P to open the print preview.
- Page Up, Spacebar, and Page Down
You may have guessed by now; pressing either the Pg Up or Pg Dn key moves to the next or previous page. When browsing the Internet, pressing the spacebar moves the scrollbar down a page. Similarly, Shift+spacebar moves the scrollbar up one page.
The above shortcuts are only a sampling of shortcuts you can use for both PCs and Apple computers. You have shortcuts for bolding text, selecting everything on a page, adding a bookmark, opening everything in browser history, learning shortcut keys for Gmail, and so much more that it would take multiple articles to explore.
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Categorised in: Technology Information
This post was written by Megabite
