Keyboard Shortcuts and Efficiency

By Tinuiti Team

Jun 12 2014

Before delving into the shortcuts themselves, take a look at the keyboard you are using. Having a well laid-out keyboard with all the necessary keys goes a long way to increasing work efficiency. Laptop keyboards and Mac keyboards in particular are notorious for omitting some surprisingly important keys. I would suggest a simple, cheap solution as a baseline: the humble default Dell keyboard. Standard keyboard layout

The blocks of keys marked off in red are keys that are oftentimes difficult to use (function keys in particular requiring the additional press of the “fn” button) or completely absent on laptop keyboards/Mac keyboards. All of them serve important functions so having ready access to them is vital, especially once you start developing the muscle memory to really take advantage of these shortcuts.

The second note before I dive into the shortcuts is that much of the efficiency gains I see (particularly when working in Excel spreadsheets) is eliminating as much mouse usage as possible. Keeping both hands on the keyboard (instead of having to constantly go back and forth between keyboard and mouse) saves a surprising amount of time over the course of the weeks and weeks we spend buried in spreadsheets. The button between the Windows and Ctrl keys on the right (box in green in picture) simulates a right click, which is invaluable in making the mouse redundant.

Now, for the shortcuts (I’ve only listed ones I use regularly and think are most useful):

General Windows Shortcuts

Alt+Tab: Cycle between all open windows quickly
- While holding Alt, push Tab to cycle through open windows. Push Shift+Tab to cycle backwards. This applies to the next several shortcuts as well.
Windows+Tab: Similar to Alt+Tab but uses Windows Aero to present a stylized version
Ctrl+Tab: Within one window, cycle between tabs
Alt+Escape: Minimize the current window
Ctrl+X,C,V: Cut, Copy, Paste (respectively)
Ctrl+F,H: Find, Find+Replace (respectively)
Ctrl+Arrow Keys: Move across whole words in text
Shift+Arrow Keys: Select text
- Combine with previous to quickly select words
Ctrl+Backspace/Delete: Delete entire previous word/next word
Ctrl+Shift+Esc: Bring up Windows Task Manager (handy when you need to kill a crashed program/task)
Windows+L: Lock computer
Windows+M/D: Minimize all windows
Windows+Shift+M: Bring back all minimized windows
Ctrl+B,I,U,[,],=,+: Bold, Italics, Underline, Increase Font Size, Decrease Font Size, Subscript, Superscript
Alt+Letter: Any time a command has an underlined letter, select that command
- EX:
- Pushing Alt+A will immediately “Replace All”. Pushing Alt+R will immediately “Replace”. Pushing Alt+M will show “More” options.
Windows+program name: brings up the start menu, immediately allows you to search for programs/files/etc
Windows+Arrow Keys: Shift current window’s position within current monitor (snap to sides of the screen, particularly useful when you want to have two Excel workbooks side-by-side). Also lets you move current window to another screen if using multiple monitors
Windows+Shift+N: Brings up current OneNote section
Windows+N: Brings up “Send to OneNote” selector
F1: Help (particularly useful in Excel when working with a function)
F12: Save As

Browser Shortcuts

F6/Ctrl+L: Select URL bar
Ctrl+N: Open new window
Ctrl+T: Open new tab
Ctrl+Shift+T: Open most recently closed tab
Ctrl+Shift+N/Ctrl+Shift+P: Opens a new incognito/private browser window (Chrome and Firefox, respectively)
Ctrl+W/Ctrl+F4: Close current tab
Ctrl+Shift+W/Alt+F4: Close current window
Ctrl+R/F5: Reload tab
Shift+F5: Fully reload tab (including cached data)
Ctrl+U: View Source
Ctrl+H: View history

Outlook

F9: Force send/receive mail
Ctrl+1,2,3…: Switch between “modes” (Mail, Calendar, People, etc)
Ctrl+R: Reply
Ctrl+F: Forward
Ctrl+U: Mark as unread
Ctrl+Q: Mark as read

Excel

Ctrl+Space: Select entire column
Shift+Space: Select entire row
F2: Click into current cell
F4: Lock formula (EG, turn “=A2” into “=$A$2”)
- Push multiple times to cycle between different lock types
F5: Go to
Ctrl+Page Up/Down: Move between worksheets within a workbook
“Right Click”+I: insert
“Right Click”+V: Paste special values
“Right Click”+F: Paste special formulas
“Right Click”+T: Paste special transpose
“Right Click”+E: Insert copied cells
“Right Click”+N: Remove hyperlinks
“Right Click”+F: Opens the format window
Ctrl+Arrow Keys: Move around whole blocks of cells
Ctrl+Shift+L: Filter
Shift+F11/Alt+Shift+F1: Insert a new worksheet
Alt+O-H-R: Rename current worksheet
Alt+E-L: Delete current worksheet

That was a lot of shortcuts and it definitely can be overwhelming if you aren’t using many of them initially, but start to introduce a few at a time until they become muscle memory and you’ll find that these can shave a little bit of time from a lot of different tasks; all that time builds up. Eventually you’ll be able to navigate a spreadsheet without needing to use your mouse at all in a fraction of the time!