h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Entry: The Joy of Keyboard Shortcuts - A87888271
Author: SashaQ - happysad - Editor - U9936370

Original Entry: The Joy of MS Keyboard Shortcuts - A663527
Original Author: Spiff - U185155

I find some keyboard shortcuts quite useful, and I liked the tone of the original Entry, so here is my rescued version - see what you think!

Good and useful entry well done

Why didn't I think of this? There is far too little of this sort of thing about. Well done!

As a trained shorthand-typist, I find I lose a lot of time by reaching for the mouse and I use short cuts wherever I can.

I have developed loads of macros in Word to save time, as well as boiler plates and shortcut keys from the selection of symbols. (This last could be included in the entry). For example,I don't live in the UK but need the £ sign a lot at work. here is no key with it on nor is there a ready-made key combination, so I have allocated Ctrl+alt+L to type it without having to take my hands off the keyboard.

You should mention that the Windows logo key is not to be found on a mac! In fact I think that macs use more key combinations, but they are all different to those you describe.

Well done! I could not do my subbing/proof reading/polishing jobs without ctrl+f, the "find" shortcut

GB

I use these all the time, naturally.... familiar enough then you don't even think about what keys your pressing for a shortcut, as for me, the shortcut, is* just the way one achieves that function

is it worth putting in control plus E, to center text in a word document, near where you've got bold, Italic etc? the center bold italic ones are so useful; its a long task to brin gup the appropiate menus and get to actually set it that way round
is it worth mentioing highlighting text using the cursor plus shift keys etc? I guess if you can use a mouse, that is a lot worse a way to try highlight/sele4ct text

Thanks everyone

I have updated the Entry with additional details - I've emphasised more that it is PC rather than Mac and I've added in those shortcuts (I didn't know about Ctrl + E )

A colleague of mine, many years ago, said that she had learned to use the mouse with her left hand, so that she had the right hand free for the number pad. I found this very odd, because the keys Strg-C, Strg-V, Strg-X (the most used shortcuts) are all conveniently placed in the left hand.

I agree with 2legs that marking with the use of the shift key together with the arrow keys is more convenient - even for the sighted. Usually I only want to replace or delete part of a word, and it is a fiddle with the mouse to hit exactly the right letters. Strg-Shift-arrow left or right marks whole words.

Other shortcuts that I very frequently use are STrg-Pos1 to go to the top of the page or beginning of the document, Strg-Ende to get to the end, the latter often combined with Shift-Enter to start a new page.

I'd better read your entry again, now, as I may be mentioning things that are already in there!

Sorry. For Strg, read Ctrl (I was looking at the keys on my German laptop)

In Excel, I find Shift-Page Down and Shift-page up handy for moving between the sheets. No, hang on, that doesn't sound right....

Perhaps you could add a link to the complete list on the Microsoft website.

Thanks TC

The original Entry contained a copy of the Microsoft list from 2005, so I have changed the list in this Entry.

I'm reluctant to include a link to Microsoft Help (as far as I can tell there isn't a plain list any more, and I'm not sure it was even 'complete') as these shortcuts are not just the preserve of Microsoft products... Do you have a helpful link?

I added a new one - Soft Carriage Return. I hope I've explained it OK - it is very useful in a WYSIWYG HTML editor, as it gives you a br/ instead of a p

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Congratulations to Spiff - this is a worthy addition to the Guide

Ah Spiff. Those were the days. I hope he and his little family are wel.