We love a good fingering. Fingering your keyboard (also known as keyboard shortcuts) can greatly increase your productivity, reduce repetitive strain, and help keep you focused. And increase your pleasure. For example, highlighting text with the keyboard and pressing Ctrl + C is much faster than taking your hand from the keyboard, highlighting the text using the mouse, clicking copy from the file menu, and then putting your hand back in place on the keyboard.

At times, when using certain features of some software, the only option is to use a keyboard shortcut. Today, for example, I needed to add a website address (URL) to a dialogue box. The only option was to use Ctrl + V to paste the address.

Below are my top 10 keyboard shortcuts I recommend PC users to consider.

Ctrl + C or Ctrl + Insert

Both Ctrl + C or Ctrl + Insert will copy the highlighted text or selected item. If you want to cut instead of copy press Ctrl + X.

Ctrl + V or Shift + Insert

Both Ctrl + V and Shift + Insert will paste the text or object that’s in the clipboard, i.e. already copied.

Ctrl + Y

Redo any change. For example, if you paste text, pressing this will paste again. it. This can also often be pressed multiple times to do multiple changes, e.g. repeatedly insert a row into a table.

Ctrl + F

Pressing Ctrl + F opens the Find in any program. This includes your Internet browser to find text on the current page.

Alt + Tab or Ctrl + Tab

Quickly switch between open programs moving forward.

Tip: Press Ctrl + Tab to switch between tabs in a program.

Ctrl + Back space and Ctrl + Left or Right arrow

Pressing Ctrl + Backspace will delete a full word at a time instead of a single character.
Holding down the Ctrl key while pressing the left or right arrow will move the cursor one word at a time instead of one character at a time. If you wanted to highlight one word at a time, you can hold down Ctrl + Shift and then press the left or right arrow key to move one word at a time in that direction while highlighting each word.

Ctrl + S

While working on a document or other file in almost every program, pressing Ctrl + S saves that file. This shortcut key should be used frequently anytime you’re working on anything important.

Ctrl + Home or Ctrl + End

Ctrl + Home will move the cursor to the beginning of the document and Ctrl + End will move the cursor to the end of a document. These shortcuts work with most documents, as well as web pages.

Ctrl + P

Open a print preview of the current page or document being viewed. For example, press Ctrl + P now to view a print preview of this page.

Page Up, Space bar, and Page Down

Pressing either the page up or page down key will move that page one page at a time in that direction. When browsing the Internet, pressing the space bar also moves the page down one page at a time.

Tip: If you are using the spacebar to go down one page at a time, press the Shift key and spacebar to go up one page at a time.