Copyright © 2022 Matthew Phillip Cooper Page 1 of 6
Common Shortcut Keys
Contents
In this lesson
Introduction..................................................................................................................................................................... 2
Combination Keys....................................................................................................................................................2
Saving using the 
Mouse
....................................................................................................................................2
Saving using the 
Keyboard
...............................................................................................................................2
File Operations............................................................................................................................................................... 3
Cut, Copy and Paste......................................................................................................................................................4
Highlighting Text...................................................................................................................................................... 4
Cut & Copy.................................................................................................................................................................. 4
Paste............................................................................................................................................................................ 5
Moving Around...............................................................................................................................................................6
The Tab key................................................................................................................................................................6
The ALT key................................................................................................................................................................6
Moving Around the Desktop............................................................................................................................6
Practice............................................................................................................................................................................. 6

Introduction

This is a short video to show the user common shortcut keys that can be used between different

applications. It will outline best practice to protect against loosing data and organising your folders.

Combination Keys

Using combinations of keys can activate the save function of all

applications. The

CTRL

is very useful, so we will start there. The

CTRL

key

is situated to the left and the right bottom hand corners of the keyboard.

For this exercise we will be using the left hand side of the keyboard.

Saving using the

Mouse

Saving your work is the

best way to prevent data loss. You are probably

using the mouse to either click the save icon or

using file menu and clicking save in there. Using

the mouse will mean that you have to take your

hands away from the keyboard, but there is an

easier way to save you document.

Saving using the

Keyboard

Using combinations of keys can activate the save function of

all applications. Use the combination of

CTRL

and

to save

your work. This has to be done in a specific way:

1. Hold down the

CTRL

on your keyboard.

2. While holding

CTRL

press the

key once. Do not hold

the

key, just press it once.

3. Release the

CTRL

key.

Practice using this key combination on everything you work on

and at regular intervals, not just at the end. Saving in this way

will soon become habit, preventing data loss. Don’t be

dependent on auto-save or the application prompting you to

save when you close it. If there is any problem that causes the

computer or application to close, you will be safe in the knowledge that you have saved and can

continue where you left off.

Figure 3: Save iconFigure 2: Save menu

Figure 1: CTRL key location

FIgure 4: Save keys

File Operations

So we started with

Save

. What if we then need to

Open

the saved document, create a

New

document while we are already writing one or

Save

a new copy of an existing document?

• To

Save

a new copy of an existing document you would normally select

Save As

from the

file menu, but it can easily be accessed by holding down both the

Shift

CTRL

keys and

pressing the

key once.

• To

Open

an existing document, hold the

CTRL

key and press the

key once.

• To start a

New

document, hold the

CTRL

key and press the

key once.

Cut, Copy and Paste

One of the main advantages of using a computer is the ability to move things around without

having to rewrite them. Most of you will be using the mouse to highlight what you want and then

using the edit menu to cut, copy or paste, You can do all of that with your keyboard.

Highlighting Text

There is no need to use a mouse to highlight a section of text.

Using a combination of

Shift ,

CTRL

and the arrow keys, you will

be able to highlight single letter, words and even whole

paragraphs without having to touch the mouse.

• To select individual letters hold the

Shift

key down and use the arrow keys to

highlight left or right of your cursor

position.

• To select individual words hold down

Shift

and

CTRL

together and use the arrow keys

to highlight

Left

Right

of your cursor

position.

• To select a line of text from your current

cursor position, hold the

Shift

key down and use the

and

DOWN

arrow keys.

• To select a paragraph of text from your current cursor position, hold down

Shift

and

CTRL

together and use the

UP and DOWN

arrow keys.

Cut & Copy

The

Cut

Copy

functions use a temporary memory storage known as the

Clipboard

or the

Buffer

Now that you have your text highlighted you can do 1 of 2 things:

• You can

Cut

the text, by witch you will remove it from the page and

store it in the buffer. To

Cut

the text hold down the

CTRL

key and

press

once.

• You can

Copy

the text and it will be stored in the buffer. To

Copy

the

text hold down the

CTRL

key and press

once.

Figure 5: Shift & CTRL key locations

Figure 6: The arrow keys

Figure 7: Cut keys

Figure 8: Copy keys

Paste

With the text copied to the

Buffer

using either previous method, you will now be able to

Paste

into an area of your choice.

To place the text stored in the

Buffer

into a place of your

choosing, you will need to first move your cursor using the

Arrow

keys.

When your cursor is where you want the text to be, hold

down

CTRL

and press the

key once. This will copy the

contents of the

Buffer

to the page.

Now will be a good time to hold

CTRL

and press the

key

to save your progress.

Figure 9: Paste keys

Moving Around

If you just went through the exercise then you probably ended up using your

Mouse

. What if I were

to tell you that there is a way to move around a

Window

, and even your

Desktop

using only the

keyboard? No mouse required.

The Tab key

The

Tab

key is situated in the upper left-hand portion of the

keyboard. The

Tab

key will enable you to move around a

Window

one step at a time. Simply press the

Tab

key once to move to the

next controllable area. The

Enter

key will act as the right-click on

the

Mouse

button does, simply press the

Enter

key once to send

the computer a message.

The ALT key

The

ALT

key, like the

CTRL

and

Shift

keys, is a

Modifier

key. These

Modifier

keys have an effect

when held down in combination with some other key or it can simply be pressed once to invoke a

special function. To access the top bar menu from the keyboard, press the

ALT

key once and then

the corresponding letter to the menu label. The menu label will normally have the corresponding

letter underlined.

Moving Around the Desktop

You can move between applications on the

Desktop

by using a simple key combination. What could

it possibly be?

Why don’t you have a think about that for a while.

The answer is hold down …

ALT

and press

Tab

once to change between open applications running

on your computer.

Practice

The key to learning is repetition. The only way to form a habit is to keep doing it until you don’t

have to think about it any more. On that note, lets put into practice what we have learned.

Figure 10: Tab key