Ever wondered what people mean when they talk about keyboard shortcuts? As the name suggests they are shortcuts for everyday tasks that you’d normally do with our mouse, that can also be done with a swift key combination.

Keyboard shortcuts can greatly increase your productivity, reduce repetitive strain, and help keep you focused on the task at hand. For example, to copy text, you can highlight text and press the Ctrl+C* shortcut. The shortcut is faster than moving your hands from the keyboard, highlighting with the mouse, choosing copy from the file menu, and then returning to the keyboard.

*As a rule of thumb, the Ctrl key is generally found on the bottom left and right of most Windows computer keyboards

Becoming a keyboard ninja

Below is a list of our favourite and most used keyboard shortcuts. Once you’ve learnt them off by heart, you’ll never look back. Once you get confident, you might even find your mouse use reduces enormously.

Copy, Cut And Paste

Whilst, as mentioned above, Ctrl+C will copy text, you may also wish to cut text from a document, for example. For this you need the combo Ctrl+X. Then, to paste your cut or copied text where you want it, you need the combo Ctrl+V.

Apple users will need to substitute the Ctrl key for the Command (cmd) key on their computers. For example, pressing Cmd+C copies highlighted text.

Find A Needle In A Haystack

Sometimes you might be searching for a specific phrase or term, be it in a document or a web page. Using Ctrl+F will bring up a little search box, where you can start typing what you’re looking for.

Apple users will need to use Cmd+F for this function.

Printing In A Flash

If you do lots of document work in the likes of Microsoft Word, or any other word-processing software and you are often printing your work out, then Ctrl+P is the combo you’ll want for quick access to the print menu.

Apple users will need to use Cmd+P to print.

Save The Day (Or At Least All Your Hard Work)

Most document editing/writing software, not to mention nearly every other type of software where file saving is an option, will have the ability to use the Ctrl+S shortcut to save your work.

Apple users will need to use Cmd+S to save their work.

Delete En Masse

Let’s say you are working on a document, for example either in a word-processing programme, or a text editor and you want to delete more than just the last couple of letters your typed. Maybe you want to delete several words or sentences. Rather than just holding done the backspace, you can instead use the combo Ctrl+Backspace which will delete full words, one at a time.

Rename In Double Time

Have you ever needed to rename a file or folder on your computer, using right-click > rename? Instead, simply highlight the file, and use the function key F2.

Save Your Bacon!

You’ll thank me for this one, above all. If you’ve made some kind of change or an error you didn’t intend, and you want to, essentially, turn back time, then the combo of Ctrl+Z is what you need to undo what you’ve done. On top of that, Ctrl+Y will redo the undo, if you get me?

Apple users will need to use Cmd+Z and Cmd+Y for these two commands.