Windows Tricks Everybody Should Know
by Christopher Morley
I am using Vista, however many of these tricks work in Windows XP (or earlier) and should continue to work in Windows 7 as well.
Size the items on your desktop by holding down Ctrl and using your mouse scroll wheel.
Create a folder toolbar by holding Ctrl while dragging a folder from your desktop to the edge of your screen.
Windows Key plus D shows your desktop, do it again and your windows are back where they were before.
Windows Key plus M minimizes all windows, Windows Key Plus Shift Plus M undoes that.
F2 to rename a selected document.
You can rename multiple documents at once, just select them all, and then rename the first document; watch the rest be given similar names plus a number.
In Outlook and the browser, sometimes there are autocomplete entries in the automatic dropdown that are no longer valid, like email addresses used by visitors who were using your computer, or old, invalid contacts. Sometimes just hitting the Delete key while you have it highlighted in the dropdown will get rid of those entries. Use the arrow keys to select instead of using the mouse.
When filling out a form, Tab usually goes to the next field, while Shift+Tab usually takes you back to the previous field.
Windows Key plus E opens an Explorer window.
Ctrl plus Esc opens the Start Menu. Using just the Windows Key is easier though.
Alt plus Tab to switch Windows.
Ctrl plus Tab to Switch Documents in many programs.
Windows Key plus 1 to open a new Browser window.
Windows Key plus 2 to switch between windows the fancy 3D way. Use your arrow keys (or tab) to scroll through your windows.
Windows Key plus 3 does the same thing as Windows Key plus D, I think.
Windows Key plus 7 - opens Media Player.
Windows Key plus F1 - opens Windows Help.
Windows Key plus Pause/Break - opens System Properties.
Windows Key plus R - run Menu. Launchy might be better though.
Windows Key plus F - Find all files - psst why did you forget where you put your stuff?
Try Double (and Triple) clicking on text (on purpose, for once).
Holding down shift as you move your cursor with your arrow keys over text selects the text.
Holding down ctrl as you move your cursor with your arrow keys through text skips words.
Holding down shift and ctrl as you move your cursor with your arrow keys through text skips words as you also select.
Caps Lock and Insert are basically useless keys.
Home goes to the beginning of a line.
End goes to the end of a line.
Ctrl plus Home goes to the top of the document.
Ctrl plus End goes to the end of the document.
Shift plus End selects the rest of the line.
Shift plus Home selects back to the beginning of the line.
Shift plus Insert is supposed to Paste. Not all programs respect this. Many only respect Ctrl V.
Ctrl plus V pastes. Ctrl plus C Copies. Ctrl plus X Cuts. In case you didn't know that. (Most people actually do know these ones.)
Shift plus Ctrl plus Home selects back to the beginning of a document.
Shift plus Ctrl plus End selects to the end of a document.
Page Up and Page Down work but often the scroll bar or the scroll wheel works.
You can edit the number of lines are scrolled using the Control Panel Mouse Properties, along with the speed of your mouse, and more.
In Windows Explorer, just click Views repeatedly until you get the one you want. You don't have to use the drop down.
If you Right click on the Desktop go to View, and use the Show Desktop Icons feature, this can be useful if your desktop is messy.
I like to turn off Align to Grid and Auto Arrange - that way Icons stay where I put them. As long as you don't rename any of the folders in the full path of the current, your icons should stay where you put them. Be wary of moving icons into a folder icon. Instead, open the folder as a window, then rubber band select icons and drag them into the folder. That way, they will stay in the same orientation as how you had them before.
Backspace in a Browser will take you back. Stop using the back button with your mouse if you like, or assign Backspace to extra mouse buttons if you have them.
Don't ignore the buttons at the top of your keyboard if you have media keys. I have ignored them as "cheesy" in the past, however they actually can be very handy.
F5 to refresh your browser.
Alt + F4 to close a window.
F6 to go to the address bar in your browser.
F11 toggle fullscreen in your browser.
Context Menu Key + Using Underlined Letter combinations can be quicker than right clicking in many cases.
Drag URLs directly from your address bar to your folder or desktop.
Drag URLs directly from your desktop or folder to your browser.
Ctrl plus Shift plus Esc = Task Manager
Shift Right Click a folder to See Open Command Window Here
Right click Run as Administrator - know when to use it.
Save yourself some time and annoyance headaches and turn off the Recycle Bin's delete confirmation. Right click the Recycle Bin and Choose Properties. Uncheck the box "Display delete confirmation dialog". Now just be a little careful as you delete files, which you should be doing anyway.
While copying or moving a folder or a file, you can drag onto an open folder's Title Bar, which can be sometimes be easier than worrying about "where it's going to go" in the target folder.
Ctrl P Print! (Thank you Eddie Izzard!!)
I just found a really great pre-release software called Fences from Stardock and it is FREE. You can organize your computer desktop by creating “fences” which act as labeled boundaries around files and folders. Double-click on your desktop to hide everything. Double-click again to show everything. If a “fence” is too small for all the files and folders in it, a scroll bar will appear automatically and you can scroll inside the fence (vertically only). Right click and drag to create a new “fence”. Fences can be resized as normal windows can be, and can “hold” any number of files and folders. When you navigate to your desktop using a regular Windows Explorer window, everything in all of the fences is right there in your desktop folder, flattened all out because Windows itself isn’t aware of the “fences”. This means you can store way more icons on your desktop than would even fit on your screen normally. This might be good for keeping organized during the job hunt, or just, in general, for life, for work, for whatever, for keeping a bunch of ideas straight. It is like having opened up folder windows embedded right into your desktop. When I directly told Microsoft about a similar idea that I had, they sent me a trial commercial license for a $6000 piece of software that they hadn't released yet as a show of thanks. You can even move files and folders to the right and to the bottom of a fence, and snap in automatically to re-arrange. You can re-prioritize individual items this way. This is the type of thing that if people saw you using it in an airport, they would be willing to pay $5 just to know what it was called. It is simple, elegant, and one of those “I should have thought of that” things that are blatantly missing from the Windows operating systems. Stardock Fences