Shortcut keys
Why?
To make life easier for youself: in many situations, using a keyboard shortcut is quicker than reaching for the mouse, finding the mouse pointer and moving it to exacly the right place on the screen before clicking.
Not everything is quicker with the keyboard but below are some shortcuts that have saved me many hours and a load of pain over many years.
Ctrl | + A | hold down the Ctrl key while pressing A |
Pick 1 new shortcut you think you’ll use and, once it’s second nature, come back and pick another.
editing Windows Office apps Remote Desktop links
Tab ⇤ | cycle through options (e.g. login/password boxes, boxes in a form, links in a web page, etc - hold Shift to cycle backwards) Might not seem like a “shortcut key” but Tabbing to the next box in a form is much quicker than having to find the mouse each time |
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Enter ↵ | submit a form (rather than clicking Submit or OK e.g. when signing in) Like the Tab key, this is quicker than having to find the mouse |
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Alt | + Tab ⇤ | switch between open apps (hold Alt until you’ve highlighted the correct app) |
Shift | + | highlight text from the cursor (hold Shift and use  or ) |
| Tip: having highlighted a section of text, simply start typing to replace it - no need to press Backspace or Delete | ||
Ctrl | + S | “Save” universal in almost every application. Just remember to use it! |
Alt | underline (or highlight) “access keys” in menus (to select options using the keyboard) | |
Most of these shortcuts are pretty universal across all apps
Ctrl | + Z | Undo |
Ctrl | + Y | Redo (this will sometimes repeat the last action if there’s nothing to redo) |
Ctrl | + A | Select all (highlight all the text and objects in your document) |
Ctrl | + | skip to the next word (can be used with Shift to highlight a word at a time) |
| + X |  U U | Shut down | |
| + E | Windows Explorer | ||
| + L | Lock the screen (so you can walk away without anyone else tampering with your system) | ||
Ctrl | + Z | Undo (even works if you wrongly renamed or moved a file) | |
Ctrl | + Y | Redo (if you changed you mind about the undo) | |
| + I | Settings | ||
Ctrl | + Z | Undo (even works if you wrongly renamed or moved a file) |
Ctrl | + Y | Redo (if you changed you mind about the undo) |
F12 | Save As (instantly opens the Save As browse window) | |
Shift | + F3 | change case (   ) (cycles through lower, capitalised & upper cases of the current word or highlighte text) |
Ctrl | + 1 | format cell ( ) (opens the “Format Cells” box for the highlightes cells) |
Shortcuts for the remote computer inside a Remote Desktop window:
Alt | + Page Up | Alt+Tab (Alt+Page Down cycles the other way) |
Alt | + Insert | cycles through apps in the order they were loaded |
Alt | + Home |  Start menu |
Alt | + Delete | Alt+Space (system menu) |
