The Best Windows Shortcuts

This is going to be a series of ‘The best shortcuts’. As a first post of a series let’s think a little bit about genesis and true meaning of word ‘shortcut’.

When speaking about shortcuts, probably, everyone of you is thinking about some shorter path through woods, mountains or their way to work that will ease your journey. That’s perfectly correct, even the official dictionary definition says the same. In simple words it’s nothing more than doing something quicker, easier or with less effort.

What is really interesting about it, in some way brain-tickling-funny too, you don’t even think much about it when you decide to use the shortcut, you just do. It’s a proccess of trying to make some actions, you do on regular basies and that often are not plesent at all, less time consuming. In general it’s called optimization and you stumble upon it in each and every part of your life. For instance, earlier mentioned road to work, shopping or day planning. A part of our life are computers, whether you like it or not, that’s the truth, computers are everywhere. So, we can agree that we, people, use shortcuts (in other words we optimize) in our life all the time, right ? So why don’t we apply them into oure-lifes and make it easier !?

What ? Does ctrl + c & ctrl + v counts ? Of course it does, but that is only the beginning…

Shortcuts with WINDOWS SYMBOL

Active window movement. Really useful when you’ve got more than 1 screen (available in Windows higher than XP)

(windows symbol) + up arrow = maximization of your active window
(windows symbol) + down arrow = minimization of your active window
(windows symbol) + left arrow = move your active window to the left (sticks window to left corner of the screen)
(windows symbol) + right arrow = move your active window to the right (sticks windows to the right corner of the screen)

Opening application

(window symbol) + <digit> e.g. 1 or 5 = openning application corresponding to the place on your task bar(counting from left side)

Desktop

(windows symbol) + d = go to desktop
(windows symbol) + m = minizations of all windows (basically the same as previous one)

Run (opens every program that is in your PATH)

(windows symbol) + r = opens ‘run’ window
(windows symbol) + r and than type ‘calc’ = opens calculator in new window
(windows symbol) + r and than type ‘mspaint’ = opens paint in new window
(windows symbol) + r and than type ‘magnify’ = opens magnifying tool
(windows symbol) + r and than type ‘regedit’ = opens registry editor
(windows symbol) + r and than type ‘inetmgr’ = opens IIS manager
(windows symbol) + r and than type ‘cmd’ = opens command line

Explorer

(windows symbol) + e = open explorer in new window (opens ‘MyComputer’)

Shortcuts within WINDOWS OS

General

ctrl + alt + delete = I don’t think I have to explain that
ctrl + shift + escape = task manager (faster than going ctrl + alt + del and than click on task manager)

Applications

alt + tab = switches to next | through working application(s) – click and hold alt key than click tab key to see the switching dialog and then keep clickicking tab key while holding alt key to switch to next application
shift + alt + tab = same as upper one but switching through application backwards
alt + F4 = closes application
(movie players) alt + enter = go to full screen
(image browsers)** f11** = go to presentation mode (full screen mode with arrow navigation ability)

Files & Folders

ctrl + shift + n = creates a ‘New Folder’
F2 = change the active file or folder name
shift + delete = deletes file or folder omitting the bin
ctrl + a = selects all
alt + enter = opens properties window on selected file or folder