Here's how to get things done fast using keyboard hotkeys:
Ctrl-O asks you what file you want to *O*pen
Ctrl-S *S*aves the file you're working on
Ctrl-N opens a *N*ew file (could be a new Word document, Excel spreadsheet, Eudora message etc.)
Ctrl-P *P*rints the file you're working on
Ctrl-C *C*opies the current selection
Ctrl-V pastes the current selection (imagine an insertion pointer in the shape of a *V*!)
Ctrl-A selects *A*ll the content of a window (surprisingly useful - make sure you try this!)
Ctrl-F tries to *F*ind a word you type in
You'll find these hotkeys work in most Windows programs.
N.B. 'Ctrl- ' means that you need to hold the Ctrl key (bottom left on the keyboard) as you type the letter.
Wouldn't it be wonderful if we could print out lists of all the available Word's hotkeys?
Well you can:
In Word, go to the Tools menu, point to Macro, and then click Macros.
In the 'Macros in' box, click Word commands.
In the 'Macro name' box, click ListCommands.
Click Run.
In the 'List Commands' dialog box, click 'Current menu and keyboard settings'.
Click OK.
On the File menu, click Print.
As you will see, Word is not short of shortcut keys, as is sometimes alleged.
*This is one of the best sources for help on Word, although a search like
"Word 2013" tutorial headers (or whatever you need help on) on Google is surprisingly effective.
Many people know that pressing the Enter key will activate a highlighted button, typically OK, in a Windows dialogue or message box. This saves you having to click OK etc. with the mouse.
But did you know that Esc may be used instead of clicking Cancel?
Moreover, you may use the Tab key (prob. above your Caps Lock key) to higlight the element (row or button) after the one which is presently highlighted.
This simple tip is a real time-saver.
Windows has a couple of useful keyboard shortcuts for opening and closing programs quickly:
To open a program (Word, etc.), hold down your Windows key. Press the first letter of the option on the keyboard (e.g. P for Programs) several times (if necessary) until the option you want is highlighted and then press Enter to open the subfolder or program.
To close a program, hold down the Alt key and press F4.
It is good to keep as few programs as possible open as one works.
This is especially true if one is using more than one application at the same time, for example one is copying text from one program to another.
If you are on an unManaged machine, you will also find that it runs more quickly if you only have a minimum of programs open.
However, the road to hell is paved with good intentions, and one frequently finds that one has many open, and one needs to shut the machine down in a hurry.
One might think that Alt-F4 is the key to closing programs down quickly, however it only works when the program is "in focus", and I would not like to define exactly what Windows means by that!
No. If you're in a real hurry, right-click on the program icons on the Taskbar (normally the bottom line on the Windows screen), and left-click on Close.
It is intelligent enough to give you a message if you have data you haven't saved in the program.
Incidentally, sometimes programs put other useful functions on the menu which appears when one right-clicks on the Taskbar icons.
Eudora, for example, has Check Mail.
Here's a quick way of moving from one open program to another. It's esp. useful when copying data from one Windows program to another.
Hold down the Alt key and press the + key once (the + key on the keypad, far right; not the one above =).
A Window appears in the screen displaying all the programs you have open.
Press + several times until you have selected the program you want and then release both Alt and Tab.
Bingo; you're there without using the mouse.
Ever really wished you could get back to where you were before everything went completely kaputt?
Ctrl-Z (hold down Ctrl and press z) will take you back one edit in many Windows programs, including Word.
Some other programs have a menu item Edit | Undo.
Sometimes you can only go back one stage; sometimes pressing Ctrl-Z several times will take you back several stages.
N.B. Ctrl-Z does not work if you made the mistake and then closed the file; it only works in the current session.
Ever wondered why certain letters in Microsoft menus, dialog boxes etc. are underlined?
Usually* you can hold down your Alt key and press the underlined letter to jump straight to that part of your screen.
Here's a simple example which should work in most e-mail (and many other) programs:
Hold down Alt and press W. You should now be able to see your Windows menu, with a list of the windows you have open in the program at the bottom of the menu.
Pressing underlined letters/numbers (now without Alt held down as you have the menu up) takes you straight to the option.
*OK - I have discovered occasions where it doen't work as the window is not in focus, and occasions where the same letter is underlined in two different places, and so you need to press it twice and then press Enter.
Many programs (e.g. Eudora, Word, Excel and Dreamweaver) allow you to use Ctrl-W (hold down Ctrl and press W) to close a window.
I reckon this is a real time-saver, esp. for some reason in Eudora.
This tips works in most Windows programs.
Ever been trying to select some text with the mouse and ended up selecting something you really didn't want?
There is another way.
Click near the beginning of the text you want to select and use the four arrows (next to the right Ctrl key, rather than on the Keypad on the right) to get the cursor immediately before what you want to select.
Hold down the Shift key (the one up from the Ctrl key) and press the right-arrow ( -> ) twice. That should have selected two letters.
To select words rather than letters, hold down the Ctrl key as well as the Shift key.
Using Shift and down arrow is also fairly nifty.
It is necessary to select text before carrying out many formatting and other functions in Word and other Windows programs.
This tip is for selecting a chunk of text longer than one screen's worth.
Obviously, you could click and drag, but when the selection is longer than one screen, you may find yourself hurtling towards the end of your document, unable to stop where you want to. (We've all done it!)
There is a better way:
Click at the beginning of the text to be selected, scroll down at your leisure to the end of the chunk, hold down Shift and click.
Marvellous! You have selected exactly what you want.
One situation this really comes into its own is when you are copying text of any length from a Web page. Dragging often involves selecting buttons, images and all sorts of unwanted stuff. However "click, Shift-click" highlights just what you need, and then you can press Ctrl-C to copy it. Go to the other application, e.g. Word or Eudora and press Ctrl-V to paste.
Windows has some useful conventions for selecting more than one thing.
If you click, for example, a file, or a folder in Windows Explorer, or an e-mail message in the Eudora Inbox, you can normally only select one at a time.
However, if you hold down the Ctrl key as you click, you can select as many "objects" as necessary, and move, copy, delete etc. all of them in one operation.
Moreover, to select all files, folders or email messages, you can select one, hold down Ctrl and press A (for All).
Incidentally, if you select an object by accident, with the Ctrl key still held down, click it again, and it is no longer selected.
(It is also possible to use the Shift key, instead of Ctrl, to select ranges of objects, but this is not as useful as the hotkeys mentioned above.)
Please note that these conventions are not adhered to in all Windows programs, but it is at least worth giving them a whirl.
The "Menu Bar" is usually the second row down at the top of a program, under the "Title Bar". It usually starts with File and ends with Help, but depending on the program, there will be several other menus between.
To get a quick idea of what a program can do, have a look at the options on its menus. If you have been using the program for some time, you may notice useful functions worth exploring. Moreover, in many programs, time-saving shortcut keys are indicated next to menu options. For example, next to File | Open, one will often find Ctrl-O.
'Clicking' is a surprisingly tricky business.
Unless phrases like 'right-click' or 'click with the right mouse button' are used, presume that 'click' means a single click of the left mouse button.
Within Windows, common functions of clicking include selecting an item or moving the text insertion point to the present position of the mouse.
To open a file or a folder, usually a 'double-click' of the left mouse button is required. Getting the speed of the double-click just right is not always easy. Some implementations of Windows allow one to change it. Some users find it easier to click once and then press the Enter (or Return) key instead of a double-click.
Lastly we have the 'right-click'. This is always a single click on the right mouse button. It brings up the 'context-sensitive menu', a list of possible things you could be wanting to do at that point. As such it is very useful. If you are in an unfamiliar program and want to do something to a selected item, the chances are it will be listed on the menu which pops up when you right-click over the selection.
Note that Windows 3.1 did not do much with the right mouse button.
This tip presumes you are right-handed. Some implementations of Windows allow for left-handed mice on which the buttons are reversed.
Wouldn't it be wonderful if there were something you could do which would give you all the options available in that part of a program?
That's what Microsoft thought too, so in and after Windows 95, they used the RIGHT mouse button for just this purpose.
Select the piece of text, folder etc. and click the right mouse button over it. In theory you should see all the options available to you at that point.
In practice, one does find that options have been omitted. Moreover, Microsoft did not implement this, for example, in dialogue boxes. There, your best option is to click the ? icon (top right) and then click the part of the dialogue box for which you require an explanation. Unfortunately, many dialogue boxes do not have the ? icon (in which case you are really stuck).
Let us hope that future versions of Windows will be more consistent.
This tip shows you how to customise your Start Menu, so that you have your most used programs only a couple of keystrokes away.
Click on the Start button (bottom left) and go to Settings and click Taskbar & Start Menu.
Click on the Advanced tab and click Advanced.
You will now find a tree structure with many of the programs installed on your computer. You may need to expand the tree structure in the left pane by clicking on the + signs.
If, for example, you wanted to move Microsoft Word from the Programs part of this tree, you would click on it in the right pane, hold down the left mouse button and drag it onto the Start Menu folder in the left pane.
Press the Windows key and typing "Word" should find the program.
N.B. You can rename the programs to take full advantage of this, by selecting them in the left pane and then clicking the name. Press Enter when you have finished. Otherwise, most things end up starting with M for Microsoft!
The Quick Launch toolbar is a row of icons to the right of the Start button (usually bottom left).
One click on these icons starts the program, so this is useful functionality.
Moreover, it is possible to add icons for our favourite programs to this toolbar:
- Locate the program you want to add to Quick Launch via Start | Programs.
- Right-click the icon for the program and drag it onto the Quick Launch toolbar.
- Drop the icon where you would like to have it.
- Select 'Create Shortcut(s) Here' and bingo, there you have it!
Before you ask, it is not possible to remove the icons which are on the toolbar by default, although by clicking them and dragging them to the right, strangely, they can be made to disappear under a >> mark.
Please find below a technique for generating passwords which are easy to remember, and difficult for hackers to crack:
1. Take a passage of text (poems are esp. good).
2. Insert numbers in place of spaces.
3. Carry out various character conversions e.g. use 0 [zero] instead of the vowel o and 1 [one] instead of the letter L.
4. Cut the passage into eight digit sections, with the first letter of each section capitalised.
Here's the system in action:
Also habe ich ihn gefragt: "Amiri, mein kleiner Liebling, sag doch Dadada, wo Tschaikowskys Klavierkonzert ist."
produces:
A1s01h@b
E2:ch:hn
G=fr@gt3
:4"Am;r;
,5M=;n6k
1E;n=71; and many more.
As you can see, it helps if one replaces vowels with punctuation and a small amount of text goes a long way. The resulting passwords contain case, numbers and punctuation, and are almost always accepted by the system. All one has to do is remember how far one has got in the text.
The number of things that can go wrong with software is almost countless. Even so, there are some useful strategies you can take, which deal with a surprisingly high percentage of them.
Firstly, if you are not sure whether a problem is hardware- or software-related, you should presume it is software-related, until you have ruled that out.
Whether a piece of software has started to behave strangely, or whether it has stopped working completely*, the first step is to close it down. Try the X top right first; then try holding down Alt and pressing F4.
If all else fails, hold down Ctrl and Alt, and press Delete. Click Task Manager. Click the program which has stopped working and click End Task twice. You may have to use End Task on several programs.
Even if you manage to close a program that was behaving strangely, it may continue to do so even after you restart it. Close down Windows and try again.
*Indications of this are, for example, that you have had the hourglass icon for a very long period of time, the program has stopped responding to the mouse and keyboard, or the program has started displaying abnormally on the screen.
If hardware really breaks there's not too much users can do, although strategically placed pieces of sellotape and blue tack do sometimes work with printers :-)
What we can do, is make sure the hardware really is not working, and try and limit the problem to a specific area.
1. Have you found all the switches? For example, some PCs have another on/off switch on the back.
2. Is electricity actually reaching the hardware? Are any lights on? If not, follow the cables from the back of the hardware to the plug and the computer. Make sure the cables are properly inserted.
3. If all the cables are connected correctly, and no electricity is reaching the hardware, we may be talking about a problem with a fuse. This could be a fuse in the plug, a fuse in an extension lead, a fuse in the room, or a fuse somewhere else in the building. You may find the hardware works when connected with another cable or to another plug. If lights do not light up on hardware when it is connected to a plug you know is working (test it with a table light or other appliance), you may have hardware failure on your hands.
Incidentally, if you start replacing fuses, do not just use a 13 amp fuse in all situations. If the existing fuse is a 3 amp, replace it with a 3 amp and so on. If a fuse blows more than once, an electrician should be consulted.
4. If electricity is reaching the hardware, but it is not working, suspect cables leading to it. Another possibility is that things have been switched on in the wrong order. The computer base unit is nearly always the last thing to be switched on. Everything else, printer, scanner, monitor etc. should be switched on before you switch the omputer's base unit on. Otherwise it may not recognise that it has a printer etc. attached to it. Close down everything and start again.
Sorry if some of the above appears obvious, but you would be surprised what a high percentage of hardware problems could be solved by taking these steps.
It is a piece of software which runs on an Operating System (e.g. Mac, Linux or Windows) and enables the OS to talk to a piece of hardware.
The hardware could be a printer, monitor, mouse etc., or it could be a card inside the machine e.g. an internal modem, or a video or sound card.
Without a driver your OS will behave as if the hardware does not exist. With the wrong driver, the hardware may behave strangely.
If you are using a Managed Machine, IS is looking after your drivers. However, if you have an unManaged machine or a machine at home, you need to take care of them. When you buy a machine it is really worth checking that the supplier has supplied not only the OS and application software disks, but also all of the drivers, in case you ever need to reinstall the software.
If you discover that you do not have the driver CD or floppy which came with the hardware, all may not be lost. Try going to the download part of the manufacturer's website. With HP printers, for example, you would have a high chance of finding a driver on http://www.hp.com. Make sure you download the driver for the OS you are using.
To discover how happy a driver is, you need to go to Device Manager in Windows 95 and later. Unfortunately Mr Gates puts Device Manager in different places depending on the version of Windows. Go to Help on the Start menu and find where he has put it. Once in Device Manager, an exclamation mark means 'there is a problem, but the hardware may be working' and a red mark indicates that it is not working at all. In both cases, installing the right driver may solve the problem.
Will I still be able to access my data in 2053 (presuming I make 91)?
My best advice would be to save data with as little formatting as possible, for example, plain text, on a network drive.
- In most programs the file format options are on the File menu under either Save As or Export. Choose the plain text option for text documents and comma-separated values for spreadsheets and databases. I am not an expert on graphics formats, but some time back someone told me that the standard for archiving was a 600dpi TIF file.
- Usually it is a good idea to use the most recent version of a piece of software. The sort of document you may want to be reading in five years time should probably be actively upgraded from an older format.
- I said network drive above, because that way, if hardware comes and goes, it may be easier to copy from a network drive to whatever we will be using.
- It is good to have data saved in different formats on different hardware.
- Earlier in the week I was in PC World looking at laptops. Not one had a 3.5" floppy drive. I suppose it is the beginning of the end for a format which I first used in Feb. 1987. On the other hand, the experience did inspire this tip.
The 'Desktop' is the screen you see when you have started Windows, but have not loaded any programs. It usually has icons like My Computer, Recycle Bin and Word in a column on the left.
A Shortcut is an icon with 'Shortcut to etc.' under it.
It is possible for you to add Shortcuts to files and folders you use frequently, on your Desktop. That saves a lot of time when accessing something.
Close any open programs. Open Windows Explorer (often at Start | Programs | (Aceessories |) Windows Explorer). If it covers the whole screen and you cannot see any part of the Desktop, click the middle, square icon top right, next to the X which would close Windows Explorer. That should display Windows Explorer in a smaller window with some of the desktop visible, but you may need to drag one of its edges so that you can see the Desktop.
In Windows Explorer, navigate to the file or folder to which you want to add a Shortcut. Hold down the right* mouse button and drag the file or folder onto the Desktop. A dialogue box should now appear. Click 'Create shortcuts here'. You should now have a Shortcut to that file or folder on your Desktop.
If you have an unneeded Shortcut or other icon on your Desktop click it and press the Delete button on your keyboard (probably just to the right of your Backspace key). You will find that it is not possible to delete all of them.
*Do not use the left mouse button, as that would move your file or folder onto the Desktop, which is not a Good Idea. If you do move a file or folder by accident, just drag it back to where it should be.
Make sure you have Windows Defender switched on.
In addition, press your Windows key, click on * [settings] and search for Windows Updates.
You should follow the instructions to install updates found, especially those marked Critical. This is a fairly time-consuming process, but, believe me, it is far better than the huge inconvenience catching a virus entails.
3. Delete e-mails from unknown sources without opening them.
Installing one up-to-date antivirus program on your stand-alone PC or laptop is a Good Thing.
Installing two programs, or some suites of antivirus programs can cause Nasty Problems.
Recently I have been in contact with several users who have had problems installing antivirus programs.
New machines often come with an antivirus program already on them, but usually the licence only lasts 3-12 months, and one does well to replace the program with e.g. F-Secure for which UCL has a campus licence.
If one forgets to deinstall the original program (Add/Remove programs in the Control Panel), one may find the machine will not start at all. The solution is to press F8 as the machine starts, go into Safe Mode and deinstall the original program, but it is all Rather Nasty Really.
Sometimes programs detect another antivirus program as they install and offer to remove it. Best not accept, as one user got into problems that way. Instead stop the installation and go to Add/Remove programs in the Control Panel to deinstall the original program.
Moreover, if one puts one of those New Fangled Suites of Antivirus and Bottle-Washing Software on an older machine, one may find that it is impossible to remove the "bloatware" and one has to rebuild the machine.
A knowledge of software versions is essential for understanding how file compatibility between computers works.
Software version numbers seem to be rather like irregular verbs. One might expect them to go 1, 2, 3 ...
However, in practice, on a PC*, for example:
Word goes 2, 6, 95, 97, 2000, XP (or 2002), 2003
Note that there are two separate dynasties of Windows:
1. Windows goes 3.1, 3.11, 95, 98, ME
2. Windows NT goes 4, 2000, XP, 2003 ... Windows 10 and Windows 11
(I may have missed out some minor/rare releases.)
- If one has the latest version of a piece of software, one may expect to be able to open files created in the last two or three versions. Moreover, it is often possible to save files as an older version of the software.
- However, if one is running an old version of a piece of software, strange things may happen if one tries to open a file created in the latest version.
- A common mistake is to confuse the version of the program with the version of Windows it is running on. People speak, for example, of "Word 98" (which does not exist) when they mean Word 97 or 2000 running on Windows 98.
So, how do we know what we've got? There are two basic methods:
1. Splash screens. Windows etc. tells you what it is, often amongst clouds, as it starts up.
2. Go to About on the Help menu.
*Apple Mac version numbers are completely different, and one may find some quite exotic ones from a PC point of view.
Various parts of the screen have technical names. One may think this is of no special interest, but they are essential if, for example, you need help (either from the Help menu or Google).
Let us presume you have nothing open, and are just looking at a Windows "Desktop".
You can see "icons" such as the "Recycle Bin", but the fun starts at the bottom*.
Left-most you have the "Start Button". Pressing the Windows key on most versions of Windows also activates it.
Moving rightwards from the Start Button you have the "Taskbar". On some versions of Windows you may get "Quick Launch" small icons you can use to start programs with a single click. However, the main function of the Taskbar is to display fairly wide icons of the programs your are currently running. You may switch between them with a single click on the icon, Alt-Tab on most versions of Windows.
And right-most, still at the same level, the pièce de résistance, we have the "System Tray". Again you have small icons, but these are of programs or utilities which typically start with Windows.
*Actually it is possible to move most things around; I'm describing the default positions.
Starting at the top:
Usually gives the name of the program and sometimes other information such as the name of the file open.
Hold down your left mouse button and drag the title bar to move a window somewhere else on your screen (unless it is 'maximised', in which case you can't move it).
This is a collection of several menus of program functions. Most programs have a File menu, a Help menu and several other menus. Every now and then it is good to go through the menus of a program one is using and see if there is anything useful one hasn't yet discovered.
Programs usually have one or more toolbars. These are rows of icons, typically, but not necesarily, below the menu bar. Often the name of the icon appears as one places the mouse pointer above it.
This is a row often to be found at the bottom edge of the program. Typically it contains information about the function one is using, or whether a certain function, e.g. overwrite, is switched on.
Most programs have rows of icons, "toolbars" at the top of their screens.
Well, sometimes they are the bottom, and sometimes they even float.
There is nothing more disorientating than losing them.
The standard place for toolbar settings to live is on the View menu. Try View | Toolbars.
If there is no such menu point, try a right mouse click in a couple of places near where the toolbar should be.
If all else fails, go to the Help menu, choose the Index option*, and search with the keyword "toolbar".
One way or the other, you should now be able to switch toolbars back on.
N.B. The most basic toolbars tend to have names like "Standard" and "Formatting".
Incidentally this is the same place that you would come if you had toolbars open you do not need.
*In my opinion the most likely one to get sense out of.
One thing one should always have in one's mind when learning new software is "how do I get out of this?". There is nothing worse than getting stuck!
Here are some keys you can try with some examples of when they work:
- Esc (that's the key probably at the top left of your keyboard near the left edge of the F1-F12 function keys.) This works to get out of full screen view in many programs including PowerPoint (where it stops the slide show).
- Alt-F4 (closes all Windows programs I've ever come across; well if you can't get out of a particular part of a program, this is a fall back).
- Command*-Q (the Mac equivalent of Alt-F4)
- Start | Shutdown (gets you out of Windows)
- Apple | Shut Down (gets you out of Mac OS X)
- click (sometimes needed at the end of a PowerPoint show etc.)
- right-click (may just give you an option to get out)
- exit [followed by Enter] (works in many command line environments e.g. DOS and Unix. You can also try logoff, logout, quit, q or bye, all followed by pressing the Enter key)
*a most exotic key with an apple and a square with loops in its corner on it
Last updated on 22 March, 2024, but needs attention!