by Jerry Stern
Webmaster, PC410.com
Westminster, Maryland
The fastest way to do production work in most programs is to use keyboard shortcuts, and not move your hands away to mouse, drag, click, slide, right-click, whirrrrrr, click, (hold-shift), click. Speed users use the keyboard, not the mouse, and get more work done in less time–they use shortcuts. I’ve created a quick list of the most useful shortcuts, but they’re not all the usual lot–a lot of these are brand-new in Windows 7.
In addition to all the normal shortcuts, there is one additional set of keyboard shortcuts: For any Windows program, tap the ‘Alt’ key to activate the menus, and then type the letter that is underlined in the menu you’d like to pull down, release the `Alt’ key, and then type the underlined letter matching the menu item you need. (Press Esc to cancel out of the menus.)
Can’t memorize all these time-savers? Start with Copy, Cut, and Paste; these are big time-savers in nearly all Windows programs. (In order, that’s Ctrl-c, Ctrl-x, and Ctrl-v.)
Download the keyboard reference chart.
If the chart opens in your browser, and you’d like a PDF to save, right-click on the link, and choose ‘Save Link as…’
NEW! Here’s the Windows 11 Keyboard chart.
Update, July 2015: Our free keyboard shortcuts for other operating systems can be found here: Windows 8 Keyboard Shortcuts and Windows 10 Keyboard Shortcuts.
