It is a fact that we spend hours in front of our computer screens everyday; typing emails, writing word documents and working on excel spreadsheets. These programs are much more user friendly than they appear, you just need to know about the sort of things they can do.
If you want to make your work easier and save lot of time, follow these 3 simple steps for fast results:
1. Google “word shortcuts” or “excel shortcuts” or whatever it is you are looking for and spend a few minutes actually reading some of the results.
2. Write yourself a note, listing some of the shortcuts you can see will save you a lot of time in your everyday work.
3. Stick the note on your computer screen for a week.
After a week of using the shortcuts you will remember the ones that increase efficiency and you can scrap any you don’t like. When you have a few memorized your productivity and speed in preparing documents will improve.
As an example, here are a few useful shortcuts for Microsoft Word that you may not been aware of:
Copy, Cut and Paste
If you are copying, cutting and pasting manually (using the menu and your mouse) try these keyboard shortcuts instead:
Ctrl+C (to copy)
Ctrl+X (to cut)
Ctrl+V (to paste)
There are hundreds of shortcuts, so do a bit of research to find which ones suit you best. Below are a few of my favourites:
Ctrl+N Opens a new Word document
Ctrl+W Closes the active window, but does not Exit Word.
Ctrl+S Saves the active document with its current file name, location and format.
Ctrl+P Prints the active file, also gives the opportunity to change print options
Ctrl+A Selects all text and graphics in the active window.
Ctrl+F Find – Searches for specified text in the active document
