I hate hyperbole, but it’s true – learning about (and using) these key combinations really will revolutionize how much faster and more efficiently you can move around your system! They’ve been around for years, and work in pretty much every program on every platform, but lately I’ve been encountering more and more people who still don’t know about them, and people always seem to be blown away when I show them, so without further ado, here’s what you need to know:
CTRL-Backspace and CTRL-Delete – Hitting the Backspace key alone deletes the character to left of the cursor, and the Delete key deletes what’s immediately to the right of the cursor. But, if you also hold the CTRL key while pressing those keys, it’ll remove entire WORDS at a time, instead of just single characters.
CTRL-left arrow and CTRL-right arrow – Just as with the key combos above, holding down the CTRL key while hitting an arrow key will make your cursor jump to the next word. This really can be a big time saver! (BONUS TIP: Hold down the SHIFT key while doing this and you can select entire words at a time too.)
SHIFT-End and SHIFT-Home – Holding down the SHIFT key while hitting the End key will select the entire line you’re on, to the right of your cursor. Holding down SHIFT-Home will select the whole line to the left of your cursor. A great way to quickly select a line to delete, boldface, etc.
CTRL-Home and CTRL-End – These key combinations will immediately send your cursor to the start (or the end) of the document.
Once you make these key combos a habit, and you find your fingers doing them without even thinking about it, you’ll be amazed at how much faster you can get things done!