As I say in the video below, it does amaze me how many people are not aware of the simple shortcuts one can use to navigate though text quickly – and in many cases faster than you would with a mouse.
For some of you, what’s listed here will make you say to yourself, "Okay, who doesn’t know these keyboard shortcuts?" Quite a few, actually. You’d be surprised.
I label these as keyboard shortcuts everybody should know because if you rely too much on your mouse, it can prove to be a huge time waster. It can mean the difference between taking five minutes to type up something and thirty.
Using myself as an example, what I used to do to save time was memorize the keyboard shortcuts from the context menus in Windows applications. Using something like Notepad, what I used to do for copying years ago was – and I kid you not – ALT+E, C. For cut I used to do ALT+E, T. (These commands do in fact still work, even in Windows 7.) I wasn’t stuck on the mouse. I was stuck on context menus, as odd as that sounds. Fortunately I got out of that nasty habit and started copy/cut/pasting the proper way.
Here are the shortcuts mentioned in the video below. Some of these are very obvious, but bear in mind what’s obvious to you may not be to another.
HOME
Go to beginning of line.
END
Go to end of line (insert lame TRON reference here).
Left/Right Arrow
Move left or right, character by character.
SHIFT + Left/Right Arrow
Move left or right, character by character, highlighting text as you move.
CTRL + Left/Right Arrow
Move left or right, word by word.
CTRL + SHIFT + Left/Right Arrow
Move left or right, word by word, highlighting text as you move.
SHIFT + CTRL + HOME/END
Selects all text before (HOME) or after (END) the current position of the cursor.
CTRL + A
Select all text
CTRL + X
Cut text
CTRL + Z
Undo a cut
CTRL + C
Copy text
CTRL + V
Paste text
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