What’s your favorite shortcut key?

[Noisy Rhysling]

I used auto correct a lot when doing German terms.

[The Latinist]

It's either ctrl+Z or Windows+L

This is so interesting and useful for me that I'm going to print it out. Randy is usually very accurate when it comes to this sort of things, I wonder what his source is.

It's simple math amortizing the time spent over five years.  If you save one second once once a month for five years, you'd be saving 1 * 12 * 5 = 60 seconds, or one minute.  If you spent more than one minute to automate the task, you'd actually be losing time.

This actually came up for me yesterday.  I had to create a bunch of new student accounts on the ActiveDirectory server. I could do it all by hand and it would take me a couple of hours; or I could figure out how to script it in PowerShell and make it a 30 second task.  Since I'll be doing it every year, I took a few hours to learn PowerShell scripting, test the code, and (which took the longest amount of time) debug the code.  I reckon it took me at least twice as long doing it this way, but in the future it will take no time at all and it will be more accurate.

[Captain Video]

A bunch of issues with Microsoft Word documents can be resolved by holding down the Ctrl key and pressing the sequence A, C, N, V.

Which does what?

Select-all, copy, new, paste.

Sounds like a job for a macro.

I had to share this today but I included a note that sometime the automation is more fun.

[The Latinist]

I had to share this today but I included a note that sometime the automation is more fun.

A very good point. Automation can also be much more accurate, which can sometimes be as important as time savings (but harder to quantify).

[brilligtove]

Aside from cut/copy/paste my most used shortcuts are alt-tab and shift-alt-tab, followed by using F2 to mute/unmute Discord.

I use a lot of ctrl and shift key combos with the mouse and cursor to make funky selections in Excel and Word.

[Alex Simmons]

I use a lot of ctrl and shift key combos with the mouse and cursor to make funky selections in Excel

If only these keyboard navigation and selections were the same in the Windows and Mac versions of Excel, but alas they are not. It's rather infuriating.

[Captain Video]

I use a lot of ctrl and shift key combos with the mouse and cursor to make funky selections in Excel

If only these keyboard navigation and selections were the same in the Windows and Mac versions of Excel, but alas they are not. It's rather infuriating.

I agree, floating between both gets me out of whack all the time, the command is in the alt space and acts like control WTF! Option is Alt and usually acts like Alt but its where the windows key should be, control is in its proper place but does ... what? Apple wants me to hit the command key

Can anyone explain what that stuff means and why they decided to set it up differently?

[Noisy Rhysling]

Ctrl-Shift-; Puts the current time in a Excel cell. Ctrl-; does the current date.

[brilligtove]

I use a lot of ctrl and shift key combos with the mouse and cursor to make funky selections in Excel

If only these keyboard navigation and selections were the same in the Windows and Mac versions of Excel, but alas they are not. It's rather infuriating.

I agree, floating between both gets me out of whack all the time, the command is in the alt space and acts like control WTF! Option is Alt and usually acts like Alt but its where the windows key should be, control is in its proper place but does ... what? Apple wants me to hit the command key

Can anyone explain what that stuff means and why they decided to set it up differently?

I'm pretty sure it was specifically to impose irritating friction on people trying to use the other system. Pure pettu asshole on all fronts, really.

[The Latinist]

No, no.  Apple’s command key and command+shortcuts predate the IBM PC. Apple keyboards, were designed to emphasize and complement the GUI and did not have a control key at all.  When IBM created the PC, it used keyboards designed for Mainframes that had existing control keys but did not have a command key.  When Microsoft created Windows for those PCs and started creating their own GUI shortcut combinations, they weren’t in a position to create a new key for that purpose (since they didn’t control the hardware their OS was running on.  So they reused the existing control key.  Apple later added a control key for use in command line apps and the like, but by then their command+ shortcuts were long-established.

So ultimately it’s just a historical accident.  If Microsoft had controlled the PC hardware market or had the clout they would later have when their OS became almost universal, I bet PCs would have had a Windows key front he get-go and those would be Windows+ commands instead.

[brilligtove]

I stand corrected. Didn't know any of that.

[drproximo]

3, starting with most favourite:

I love Windows+R mostly for the character map, but occasionally for the command line, paint, or notepad.

I only learned about Windows+L recently, and now I use it on my work computer every time I leave the desk.

And I don't know if there's a practical difference between Windows+M and Windows+D, but I've grown accustomed to using the latter.

[drproximo]

There's a prank that we used to play on colleagues when they left their screens unlocked. Ctrl-Alt-Up arrow on a Windows computer flips the screen upside-down.

What was even better if we had time was to take a screenshot of the desktop, rotate it 180°, and set it as their desktop wallpaper, then flip the screen.

Ctrl-Alt-Down arrow restores the screen to its normal orientation if this is ever done to you.

I sometimes do a much more primitive version of this on April Fool's if I get the chance. I take a screenshot of the desktop, flip the screenshot, and make the image full screen. I never knew about the flip shortcut.

[Alex Simmons]

The worst thing with the Mac is when I'm running Win10 in virtual machine and running the Windows version of Excel, the normal keyboard shortcuts to select a range from the current selected cell across or down (or both, or indeed up or left) to the last cell in that row and/or column with content (or the next next cell with content if the ones between are blank) just doesn't work, at all no matter the combination of shift/control/option/command I use with the cursor arrows.

It's infuriating as making such a selection in Excel is such a common action and doing it any other way is a complete PITA, especially with large sheets.

[brilligtove]

The worst thing with the Mac is when I'm running Win10 in virtual machine and running the Windows version of Excel, the normal keyboard shortcuts to select a range from the current selected cell across or down (or both, or indeed up or left) to the last cell in that row and/or column with content (or the next next cell with content if the ones between are blank) just doesn't work, at all no matter the combination of shift/control/option/command I use with the cursor arrows.

It's infuriating as making such a selection in Excel is such a common action and doing it any other way is a complete PITA, especially with large sheets.

Wait, shift+ctrl+[cursor] doesn't work? That sucks. Have you tried it in full-screen windows mode (as opposed to having a Windows window)?