I read an article today about different keyboard shortcuts in OpenOffice.org Writer that was very helpful. If you use Writer you can certainly take advantage of some of these. The author said that some of these will probably work in other programs. I tested a couple of these in my blog editor and can confirm some work here as well.
To start off, let me list some of the basic ones that everyone should know.
- CTRL + C = copy
- CTRL + V = paste
- CTRL + X = cut
- CTRL + P = print
- CTRL + S = save
Here are three very useful ones he pointed out that I did not know.
- CTRL + ALT + Up/Down Arrow = moves the current paragraph above or below the previous or next paragraph.
- CTRL + Left/Right Arrow = moves the cursor to the next word either left or right.
- SHIFT + Up/Down/Left/Right Arrow = selects the text appropriately. Just try it and you will understand how to use it.
Jump on over to the original article to see the many others he showed. Not all of them will be useful for everyone, but using keyboard shortcuts really are a better way to work once you learn them. Until you learn them and put them into practice it is hard to see their value.
One shortcut I learned quite by accident is CTRL + z. If you make a delete or move information in your blog that was not what you wanted, CTRL + z will put back the information you either deleted or moved.
That was a boon to me because I sometimes don’t get to move all the information and my sentence is screwed up. Sure saves time trying to find the missing letters or sentences.
Yes, CTRL + Z is an important one. That is “undo” in almost all applications.
I use CTRL+Home and CTRL+End a bit to move in a big document or to avoid having to leave the keyboard to grab the mouse.
I wish that the Find/Replace keys were a bit more consitant between programs. I use Word (less often), Write (more Often) and NoteTab Lite (as my text editor to strip out HTML code when I want to copy from the web, in one easy step), but NTl doesn’t have exactly the same shortcut keys