Top Ten Useful Windows Tricks

Iain Laskey reveals his ten favourite shortcuts and tricks for all versions of Windows

Anyone who has used Windows for any length of time has probably got their own shortcuts they use for common tasks. They may even have discovered workarounds for common Windows foibles. Here are some of my favourites. Some you may have seen before, some will hopefully be new to you.

1. Make it Easier Arranging your IE Favourites

A real bugbear for me is the tiny non-resizable dialog box you get when you select 'Favourites>Organize Favourites' in Internet Explorer. Try pressing shift as you select this option. You'll get a resizable window that makes it far easier dragging and dropping your favourites around. You'll probably want to select 'View/List' before getting to work with this screen though.

2. Be Secure

Make sure you have an antivirus program and a firewall installed. You should also endeavour to keep them up to date. A good place to start is with our downloads section, where you can download Zone Alarm and AVG Anti-Virus. With so many viruses and hackers out there, you'd be mad not to. As an aside, if you ever get an email warning of you of a virus and asking you to pass the message on, don't. They are always hoaxes. No real antivirus firm ever asks people to pass the message on via email. If you ever want to be sure, go to www.symantec.com where you can easily check for any virus by name and see if it is a hoax or not.

3. Quick access to Windows Explorer

If like me you are always firing up Windows Explorer, you might find two shortcuts useful. The first is to right-click on the Start Button. You get a different menu one option of which is 'Explore'. A useful keyboard shortcut for starting Explorer is Windows-e i.e. press the Windows key and 'e' at the same time.

4. Finding out how much space a group of files take

If I'm getting ready to burn a CD or just moving files around, I often need to know the total size of a group of files. Explorer isn't very helpful here but a good way to find out is to press the ctrl key whilst you click on the various files. Once they are all selected, release ctrl and then right-click and select 'Properties'. The Properties screen will tell you the number of files and the combined total size.

5. Copy or Move?

When you copy a file from one place to another, Windows makes a decision on your behalf. If the source and destination are the same drive, Windows moves the file. If it is a different drive Windows copies it. You can override this though. If you press control and whilst dragging and dropping a file from one place to another on the same drive, Windows will copy it instead of move. You can see this change as Windows puts a '+' next to the mouse cursor. If you are copying from one drive to another, press shift to change from a copy to a move. Here you will see the + disappear when you press shift.

6. Start programs with keyboard shortcuts

If you have programs you tend to use a lot, you can start them with a keyboard shortcut. To do this, right click on the icon on the desktop (assuming you have a shortcut icon there), select Properties and where it says 'Shortcut Key' enter the key(s) you want to use. I tend to use ones that are easy to remember i.e. AOL would be ctrl-shift-A (A for AOL). Windows forces you to certain combinations to prevent your choices clashing with any existing keyboard shortcuts but ctrl-shift is easy to press with one hand even if you are left handed.

7. Using Character Map

When working on a document, there are times when you need odd characters like copyright signs, certain currency symbols or dingbats (small graphics). It isn't always obvious which combination of keys will produce the right character. Go to Start>Accessories>Character Map for the answer. This small application lets you choose different fonts and then shows you all the characters in that font. You can select one and copy it ready to paste in to your document. It also shows you which short-cut keys can be used to produce the character to save you having to use the character map next time.

8. Stopping CDs from Auto Running

If you ever need to stop a CD auto-starting when you insert it, press and hold shift as the CD-ROM drive spins up. This works for all types of CD including music CDs.

9. Double Clicking on the Title Bar

If you double click on the title bar of a Window, it will toggle between maximised and normal size. It's not much of a time saver but gives you a much bigger target to aim for with your mouse!

10. Quick Zooming with Wheely Mice

If you wish to quickly increase the font size of a web page, Word document or Excel worksheet and have a mouse with a wheel, press Ctrl whilst moving the wheel. The effect is to increase/decrease the zoom very quickly and easily. This is most useful with Web pages that have very small text although it is possible to write HTML that forces the size such that you cannot adjust it. In most cases you should see some benefit from this technique though.

 

Iain Laskey
See Iain's site at www.pcbookreview.com