A few years back, I injured my hand in a weird way...basically, it became painful to use a mouse, but the keyboard was still fine. So, I learned how to navigate most of Windows without taking my hands off the keyboard. It's much faster and much easier once you get the hang of it. Today, you could swipe my mouse from my desk and there's a better-than-even chance I won't notice before lunch. So, here's some of my favorites...
General
- ALT+TAB: This is now the equivalent of knowing what the "enter" key does. You should certainly have a good handle on it if you are in front of a computer for more than 5 minutes on any given day.
- WIN+TAB: On Aero themes, it's ALT+TAB on steroids
- ALT+ESC: Quickly minimize what you're looking at. Great for when the boss sneaks up on you while you're browsing gonewild or something. Bonus is that it doesn't give the telltale "blip" on the screen of ALT+TAB that any boss worth his salt will recognize.
- CTRL+X, C and V: Cut, Copy, Paste...respectively.
- CTRL+F, or H: Find, Replace...respectively.
- CTRL+A: Select All
- SHIFT+Arrow Keys: Select text
- CTRL+Arrow Keys: Move across words in text
- CTRL+SHIFT+Arrow Keys: Select words/lines/paragraphs of text.
- CTRL+Backspace: Deletes previous word/character block
- CTRL+Delete: Deletes next word/character block
- CTRL+SHIFT+ESC: Windows Task Manager. No more ALT+CTRL+DELETE!
- WIN+L: Lock yo shit
- WIN+M or WIN+D: Minimize all the things.
- WIN+SHIFT+M: Undoes WIN+M/D
- CTRL+B: Toggle Bold formatting (works in most word processors or other text-formatting editors)
- CTRL+I: Toggle Italic formatting
- CTRL+U: Toggle Underline
- WIN+ R: Open "Run" Prompt
Multi-Monitor
- WIN+Arrow keys: Shift position within current monitor
- WIN+SHIFT+Arrow keys: Move window to different monitor.
Windows Explorer
Note: many of these work the same in most browsers where applicable
- WIN+E: Open new instance of Windows Explorer at the My Computer location
- ALT+D: Move cursor to the location/url bar.
- CTRL+W: Close tab or browser window.
- CTRL+N: When already in Explorer, this opens a new instance of explorer at your current location
- SHIFT+DELETE: Deletes a file, bypassing the recycle bin.
- CTRL+SHIFT+N: New folder
- F2: Rename file. Tab from this to continue down the row with renaming.
Browsing the intertubes
- CTRL+L: Move the cursor to the URL bar
- CTRL+K: Move the cursor the the search box
- CTRL+W: Close current window
- CTRL+SHIFT+W: This is what I like to call "The Productivity Shortcut". Closes your browser.
- CTRL+N: New browser window
- CTRL+SHIFT+N (Chrome): Incognito window. Use CTRL+SHIFT+P in Firefox.
- CTRL+T: New Tab
- CTRL+SHIFT+T: Open the most recently closed tab.
- CTRL+TAB: Move to the next tab.
- CTRL+SHIFT+TAB: Move to the previous tab.
- CTRL+1-9: Go to the tab at the position indicated by the number you press. E.g., press CTRL+1 takes you to the first tab.
- CTRL+R: Reload the tab. F5 does this too. SHIFT+F5 will do a full reload of any cached data as well, great for when you're messing around with CSS
- CTRL+U: View Source
- CTRL+P: Print
- CTRL+H: View your history
- CTRL+B or CTRL+SHIFT+B: Bookmarks. In Chrome, the SHIFT version toggles the bookmarks bar.
- CTRL+D: Bookmark the current page
- CTRL+0: Reset zoom
- CTRL+Plus/Minus sign: Adjust zoom
MS Excel
- CTRL+Arrow keys: Navigate around a region. For example, press CTRL+DOWN ARROW and it will take you to the first empty cell in the column you are in.
- CTRL+SHIFT+ARROWS: Highlights the region
- SHIFT+ARROWS: Highlight individual cells
- CTRL+SHIFT+R: Fill right.
- CTRL+SHIFT+D: Fill down
- CTRL+SHIFT+L: Activate column filtering.
- CTRL+SHIFT+1-6: Apply various number formats. One=Decimal, 2=Time, 3=Date, 4=Currency, 5=Percent, 6=Scientific.
- CTRL+SHIFT+~: Apply general numeric formatting, no decimals
- CTRL+SHIFT+7: Apply thin outer border around the selected region of cells
- CTRL+ALT+V: Paste Special Menu (credit to /u/nexuschild)
- And a quite a few more...
Outlook
- CTRL+N: New item, depending upon the context. i.e., if you are in the mail window, it will open a new email to compose. If you are in the calendar, a new appointment.
- CTRL+1-5: Switch context, 1=mail, 2=calendar, 3=contacts etc.
- F9: Send/Receive all
- CTRL+U (Mail): Mark item unread. CTRL+Q marks it read
- SHIFT+DELETE: Permanently delete an item
- CTRL+F: Forward an item
- CTRL+R: Reply (mail).
- CTRL+SHIFT+B: Address Book
- And more...
- c - Comment when on a story in News Feed
- j and k - Scroll between News Feed stories (like RES)
- l - like or unlike a selected story
- q - search for a friend to chat with
- p - Focus on the text box when making a post
- / - Search
Access Keys for Facebook: (Use CTRL+ALT+# in FF, ALT+# in Chrome and IE)
- 0 - Help
- 1 - Home
- 2 - Timeline
- 3 - Friends
- 4 - Inbox
- 5 – Notifications
- 6 – Account Settings
- 7 - Privacy
- 8 - About
- 9 - Terms
- m - New Message
And of course...reddit keyboard nav, available if you have RES
Visual Studio (2012, maybe a few others)
Note: VS is a little more customize-able than the others on this list. These are the default bindings, but you can easily adjust them in the Options
- CTRL+ALT+O or N: Open or Create VS Project
- SHIFT+ALT+O or N: Open or Create Website project
- CTRL+SHIFT+A: Add new item
- SHIFT+ALT+A: Add Existing Item
- CTRL+SHIFT+S: Save all of the things
- CTRL+SHIFT+W: View the current webpage object in your browser.
- F5: Start Debugging
- CTRL+F5: Start without going into the debugger
- CTRL+SHIFT+B: Build solution
- F11: Step Into
- F10: Step Over
- SHIFT+F11: Step Out
- CTRL+SHIFT+F5: Restart Debugging
- F12: Go To Definition (You can also CTRL+Click)
- CTRL+F12: Go to declaration
- CTRL+Up/Down arrow: In a code window, this shifts the window without moving your cursor. Love this one.
- ALT+Up/Down: Move line of code (this might be a part of Productivity Power Tools...I can't remember if it was integrated in VS2012, prior to that it's definitely PPT only though)
- CTRL+X: If you do this without highlighting anything, it will cut the entire line. Same applies to CTRL+C. 1.CTRL+SHIFT+V: Cycle through the clipboard ring. Again, I love this one. If you are moving parts of code to different places and don't want to switch back and forth, just copy each one individually, then use this to pull them up.
- CTRL+I: Incremental search. This is like a mini-find function. Press it and start typing, it will go to the next instance of what you are looking for. Press it again, and it goes to the next one. It's a little less "overhead" than CTRL+F, especially pre-2012.
- CTRL+K, C: Comment selected line(s)
- CTRL+K, U: Uncomment selected line(s)
- CTRL+ALT+L: Go to the solution explorer
- F4: Properties Window
- ALT+SHIFT+ENTER: Toggle Full Screen
- CTRL+ALT+X: Toolbox
Those are the ones I use probably every day, or at least close to it. There are HUNDREDS more, though. If you are doing literally ANYTHING with your mouse, you can assign that function to a keyboard shortcut. VS is an IDE that is designed to be completely operated without a mouse.
Feel free to write