Bonus tip: Hold down Windows while you repeatedly press Tab to cycle through the buttons on your taskbar.
Zip around your desktop: Holding down Alt while you repeatedly press Tab cycles you through your open applications. Pressing Alt-Space opens the control menu in the upper-left corner of the current application window. Close the current application by pressing Alt-F4.
Bonus tip: To open the control menu in the upper-left corner of the current document window in Office and in some other applications, press Alt-Hyphen; and to close the current document, type Ctrl-F4.
Pressing Shift-F10 or Application will bring up the context menu for the selected object--the same as right-clicking it. Windows-M and Windows-D minimize all open windows and return you to the desktop. Shift-Windows-M reopens all the windows ( Windows-D will restore them, too, if that's the key combination you used to minimize them).
Bonus tip: In Windows Explorer, folder windows, and the desktop, press Alt-Enter to open a selected object's Properties dialog box, and Windows-Break to open System Properties (the Break key is on the upper right of most keyboards).
Rush through menus: Alt and F10 take you to the current window's menu bar. Once there, you can navigate with the arrow keys, or quickly pop open a menu item by pressing its underlined letter ( Alt then V to open the View menu, for example). After the menu is open, press the option's underlined letter to select it. For instance, in many programs, pressing Alt followed by F followed by P opens the File menu, then selects the Print option--no key combinations needed.
Explore in an instant: Enter Windows-E to launch Windows Explorer, then just press Backspace to move to the parent folder of your current folder. Type F2 to rename the selected folder or file, and F3 to search for a file.
Make short(cut) work of files and documents: These shortcuts aren't necessarily part of Windows itself, but they are supported by many applications:
Ctrl-S saves your current work to disk. Get in the habit of pressing this often.
Ctrl-O opens a new document.
Ctrl-Z and Alt-Backspace undo the last thing you did (often repeatedly).
Ctrl-Y undoes the last undo (or redoes).
Ctrl-A selects everything in the open window, whether it's all the files in a folder, or the entire document.
Ctrl-X deletes the selection and moves it to the clipboard.
Ctrl-C copies the selection to the clipboard without deleting it.
Ctrl-V pastes the clipboard contents into the active program or onto the desktop.
Ctrl-I turns italics on or off.
Ctrl-B turns bold on or off.
Ctrl-U turns underlining on or off.
Ctrl-F and F3 launch the program's search or find tool.
Ctrl-Home moves the cursor to the beginning of the open file or document.
Ctrl-End moves the cursor to the end of the open file or document.
Ctrl-Tab, Ctrl-Shift-Tab, Ctrl-Page Down, and Ctrl-Page Up move you from tab to tab in a dialog box.
Microsoft Office 2000 and 2002:
Ctrl-C twice displays Office's clipboard.
Ctrl-Down Arrow expands the currently displayed menu to full length.
F5 or Ctrl-G opens the Go To dialog.
Shift-F5 takes you to a previous revision--or in a newly opened document, to where the insertion point was when the document was last closed.
F7 launches the spelling checker.
Microsoft Word 2000 and 2002:
Ctrl-Space turns on default formatting (
Ctrl-0 (zero above the letter keys) adds or removes a line's worth of spacing above the current paragraph(s).
Ctrl-1 (above the letter keys) converts the current paragraph or selected paragraphs to single-line spaces.
Ctrl-2 (above the letter keys) double-spaces the current paragraph(s).
Ctrl-5 (above the letter keys) applies 1.5-line spacing to the current paragraph(s).
Alt-5 (on the numeric keypad) selects the entire current table.
Alt-Shift-D inserts an updating date.
Alt-Shift-T inserts an updating time.
Shift-F7 launches the thesaurus.
Excel 2000 and 2002:
Ctrl-Space selects the current column.
Shift-Space selects the current row.
Ctrl-Semicolon inserts the date.
Ctrl-Colon inserts the time.
Ctrl-Double Quote enters a copy of the cell above (without formatting).
Ctrl-1 will bring up the Excel Format Cells dialog box.
Ctrl-Page Up and Ctrl-Page Down move up and down through worksheets.
Ctrl-Enter instead of just Enter after entering data into one of several preselected cells will put the data in all those cells.
Internet Explorer:
Ctrl-O brings up the Open dialog box for browsing to another Web site.
Ctrl-N opens a new browser window to your home page.
Alt-D selects the Address bar.
Backspace is the same as choosing the Back button.
Shift-Backspace is the same as clicking the Forward button.
Restoring .jpg Thumbnails
I have somehow lost the ability to preview .jpg files in Windows Explorer. How do I get it back?
This is a common problem with Windows 98, 2000, and Me, although not--as far as I can tell--with XP: Windows Explorer suddenly loses the ability to preview .jpg and other image file types. This is often caused by ill-behaved installation programs that take over the .jpg association when loading a graphics application. A program can grab just the .jpg association and not interfere with this particular feature of Windows, but some apps associate themselves with more graphics formats in a needlessly aggressive and destructive way.
Fortunately, fixing the problem is pretty easy. The first step is to close all running applications. Then select Start, Run, type regsvr32 thumbvw.dll, and press Enter. If you get an error message, try entering regsvr32 %windir%\system\thumbvw.dll (in Windows 98 or Me) or regsvr32 %windir%\system32\thumbvw.dll (in Windows 2000). After you reboot your computer, Explorer should preview your .jpg files once again.
If this doesn't work, read Scott Dunn's tip " Preview Images in Windows Explorer" from the February 2001 Windows Tips column.
Change IE's Autocomplete
I like the way Internet Explorer remembers and fills in the appropriate user name and password for sites where I'm registered. But some of the entries are wrong. How do I delete them?
The feature you're talking about is called AutoComplete, but the name is confusing because it also refers to the way Internet Explorer fills in URLs as you type them--an entirely different operation. The AutoComplete your question relates to is the one for IE forms--specifically user names and passwords.
To get rid of an AutoComplete listing, go to the Web site and start to type the troublesome entry. IE will pop up a list of existing options. Highlight the one you want to delete, but don't click it (clicking will paste it into the field). Then press Delete and click Yes.
Another problem is that IE's AutoComplete stops asking if it should save entries. If you want it to ask, select Tools, Internet Options, click the Content tab, then click the AutoComplete button. Check Prompt me to save passwords and click OK twice.
Change a Drive Letter
Windows XP and 2000 let you change the letter assigned to a drive other than your system volume or boot volume ('T:' instead of 'D:', for example). Right-click My Computer and select Manage. In the Computer Management program's left pane, select Disk Management under Storage. Right-click the drive or partition you want to change and select Change Drive Letter and Paths ( Change Drive Letter and Path in Windows 2000). Click the Change button ( Edit in Windows 2000). Select a new drive letter in the 'Assign the following drive letter' drop-down menu ('Assign a drive letter' in Windows 2000). Click OK, then Yes.
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