Top Tips

Mastering these shortcuts can significantly increase your productivity, moving the mouse around screen to point and click items is actually far more time consuming than most people realise.

Keep checking this list for more shortcut keys - there are so many shortcut keys for Windows and its associated programs that it's almost impossible to find all of them immediately, so new ones are being discovered and added all the time.

If you discover any useful shortcut keys that we haven't mentioned here, then feel free to email them into us and we wil add them to our list.

 

 

Are there any shortcut keys for the Windows interface?

Yes, there are quite a few which are listed below.

Many of them use the 'Windows' Key, in conjunction with another key, to avoid constantly re-typing the words, where the 'Windows' key is required we use the phrase 'WK'. Where other keys such as the shift key or 'alt' key are used the will be displayed as [Shift] or [Alt] etc.
Note - Some shortcuts (such as F3 to open the search dialog) may only work when the desktop is being displayed.

Key Action
F1 Obtain context sensitive help for the current screen.
F2 Rename a selected file or icon.
F3 Open the 'Search' dialog box.
F4 Used in Windows Explorer to display the address bar as a tree view.
F5 Refresh the current view / window.
F8 Used whilst starting up Windows to allow access to various boot options and 'Safe Mode'.
   
'WK' Show the Start menu.
'WK' + D Show the Desktop.
'WK' + E Open 'My Computer'.
'WK' + F Open the Search dialog
'WK' + L Lock the system / show the log off menu.
'WK' + M Minimise all Windows.
'WK' + R Open the 'Run' dialog box.
'WK' + U Open the Utility Manager.
'WK' + F1 Display Windows Help
'WK' + 'Break' Display the System properties dialog box.
'WK' + 'Shift' + M Restore all minimised windows.
[Ctrl]+[Alt]+[Delete] Open Windows XP task manager.
[Delete] Delete current highlighted object.
[Shift] + [Delete] Permanently delete the selected object, bypassing the Recycle bin.



This page last updated December 12th 2009 Bookmark and Share