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Name: Dataccount Inc.

Location: New York, New York, United States

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Oliver has compiled a quick list of tips to help keep you productivity rate high as possible. This volume consists of highlighting and cursor movement tips.

Advanced Selection and Navigation Efficiency Tips

Switching one of your hands between the keyboard and mouse constantly can seriously impede productivity. Here are my favorite ways to highlight/select sections of text using only the keyboard:

SHIFT+End: Highlights everything from your current cursor to the end of the line.

SHIFT+Home: Highlights everything from your current cursor to the beginning of the line.

CTRL+SHIFT+End: Highlights everything from your current cursor to the end of the document.

CTRL+SHIFT+Home: Highlights everything from your current cursor to the beginning of the document.

CTRL+Right/Left Arrow: Move to the right or left one word.

CTRL+SHIFT+Right/Left Arrow: Move to the right or left one word, and highlight/select the word. You can continue holding down CTRL+SHIFT keep tapping the arrow key to highlight the next word in that direction. (You can then use the opposite arrow to deselect the last added word)

CTRL+Up/Down Arrow: Move to the right or left one paragraph.

CTRL+SHIFT+Up/Down Arrow: Works just like CTRL+SHIFT+Right/Left Arrow, but selection is by paragraph, rather than by word.

SHIFT+Up/Down Arrow: Works just like CTRL+SHIFT+Right/Left Arrow, but selection is by line, rather than by word.

SHIFT+Page Up/Page Down: Works just like CTRL+SHIFT+Right/Left Arrow, but selection is by line, rather than by word.

Sometimes using the mouse is faster, here are a few way to make quick selections with the mouse:

Double Click (a word in text document/field): Double clicking a word, will select the word (and the space after immediately following it).

SHIFT+MouseClick: Will highlight/select everything between your cursor, and where you click.

CRTRL+Click or CTRL+Mouse Drag: After highlighting/creating a selection with the mouse, hold down the CTRL key to ADD your new selection to the existing selection. This is most useful when working with lists of folders and files in windows, but will work in most windows programs too.

Labels: enhance efficiency, Microsoft, Navigation, Oliver, short cuts, Tech tips, Volume III

Oliver's Efficiency Tips Volume III

Twenty-Ten is here, no flying cars that we were promised 30 years ago but we are glad to be bringing our tech tips into the new decade. Seeing as we have already discussed the modifier key Ctrl in depth. It's about time we added a few tips on its keyboard neighbor sandwiching the space bar: ALT key.

The Alt-Key

The alt-key is generally used in combination with other keys as menu short-cuts. This means the function of the ALT key often depends on what programs you have open, and running. However, most windows programs follow similar conventions, and the following ALT key commands will work in almost all windows programs.

Menu Actions

ALT- "mouse less menu access" This key alone, will move your cursor up to the menu of the program you are working in. you can then use the arrow keys to move around the menu, and the enter key to select the menu item you want.

ALT-"menu letter" In most windows programs, you will notice that each of the menu items has a single letter underlined. You can hit ALT+ the underlined letter, to go to that menu item immediately. For this key combination you actually have the ability to hit the ALT key alone, THEN select the menu letter you want.

Window Navigation

ALT-Tab Holding down the alt key and then tapping the TAB key will switch between the various program you have running on your computer.

ALT-Shift-Tab Works the same way at ALT-Tab, but cycles through programs in the reverse order.

ALT-F4 Closes the current program. Acts like clicking the X to close the window.
Other Functions

ALT-PrintScrn This key combination will take a “Screen shot” of your active window, and put it in the clipboard. You can paste this image into word, or paint, or any other program that lets you paste an image. This can be very useful when you need to make a note of an error on your screen for your tech support person.

Everyone's most used Alt function, CTRL+ALT+DEL once will bring up the task manager. Enter this command twice, and you will get a system restart.

Last but not least, holding down alt and entering certain series of numbers off the right hand number pad will leave you with some interesting characters. Here are a few examples ± ╖ ◄ ▼ ƒ ♦ ♠
We encourage you to explore this less known function and post your favorite symbols!

Labels: Alt, enhance efficiency, Microsoft, Oliver, short cuts, Tech tips, Volume III

Oliver's Efficiency Tips Volume II

As Dataccount continues to explore the hidden functionality behind base efficiency for Microsoft programs and operating systems we are now divulging the secrets of the Shift Key for uses other than capitalization.


The Shift Key:
The primary Shift key function is known by most everybody, capitalization. However, there are quite a few other shift key combinations that can prove very useful when working in windows. The following key commands bellow are usable in almost every single windows program you use. These are the ones that I use the most:

Shift-Home: Select everything between the cursor and the beginning of the line

Shift-End: Select everything between the cursor and the end of the line

Shift-UpArrow :Select everything between the cursor and one line up

Shift-DownArrow: Select everything between the cursor and one line down

Shift -PageUp: Select everything between the cursor, and one page up from the cursor

Shift -PageUp: Select everything between the cursor, and one page down from the cursor

Shift -Insert: This can be used as an alternative to ctrl+v as a "Paste" function this is especially useful in situations where ctrl+v is not recognized by the program.

Shift - Delete: Alternative to ctrl +x as "Cut" function. Again this can be useful for situations where ctrl+x is not recognized. But use care with this key combination as incorrectly entering it may end with just Delete.

Shift -Ctrl +: this interesting key combination will provide you with the ability to add superscript to the document you are working on.

We welcome any additional hints or uses for these keys that our readers may have. We will gladly publish them to our blog and give credit to the person for the up date. We hope that the tips will save some time in your day. And don't worry we will continue this series into the new year.

Labels: enhance efficiency, Microsoft, Oliver, Shift, short cuts, Tech tips, Volume II