Excellent Microsoft At Work article on Office 2007 productivity tips. Half of these tips were new to me and there was an alternative to one of them in the community contributed tips at the bottom of the article. Well worth the read.
Years ago, I used to provide a new Office tip every week on the Legal Web site. That stopped when CM made maintaining the web site so much more difficult for me. I found that it was the simple tips that people appreciated the most. In any case, here are my three most popular tips for using the Shift key: Selecting several screens of text. When I try and select text that extends off of the screen, I am often frustrated as pages zoom by and I can not get just the text I want. It happens in a flash in Excel. Here is a much easier way. Click where you want to start the selection. Do not hold down the left mouse button, but go where you want the selection to end. Hold down the shift key and then left click. Zap, just what you want will be highlighted. This trick of using Shift with a motion key works in Word, Excel, Explorer, Internet Explorer and most Windows applications, including Windows, itself. Select text with Shift + Click
Back to last spot. Isn't it annoying when you copy something from way down in a Word document, and then have problems finding your way back to paste the text? No more - one simple shortcut will take you back to the last place you made an edit or typed in the document. Remembers the last four changes. Return to last change using Shift + F5
Deleting for Good. We all get junk e-mail messages that we want to delete. However, like all other messages, when you delete it the message is moved to the Deleted Items folder instead of really being deleted. However, if you hold down the shift key while deleting, it is gone for good, bypassing the Deleted Items folder. This trick works in many places throughout Windows. In Explorer, if you hold down shift while deleting a file, it does not go to the recycle bin. Kill it with Shift + Delete.
Shifty Tips
Years ago, I used to provide a new Office tip every week on the Legal Web site. That stopped when CM made maintaining the web site so much more difficult for me. I found that it was the simple tips that people appreciated the most. In any case, here are my three most popular tips for using the Shift key:
Selecting several screens of text. When I try and select text that extends off of the screen, I am often frustrated as pages zoom by and I can not get just the text I want. It happens in a flash in Excel. Here is a much easier way. Click where you want to start the selection. Do not hold down the left mouse button, but go where you want the selection to end. Hold down the shift key and then left click. Zap, just what you want will be highlighted. This trick of using Shift with a motion key works in Word, Excel, Explorer, Internet Explorer and most Windows applications, including Windows, itself. Select text with Shift + Click
Back to last spot. Isn't it annoying when you copy something from way down in a Word document, and then have problems finding your way back to paste the text? No more - one simple shortcut will take you back to the last place you made an edit or typed in the document. Remembers the last four changes. Return to last change using Shift + F5
Deleting for Good. We all get junk e-mail messages that we want to delete. However, like all other messages, when you delete it the message is moved to the Deleted Items folder instead of really being deleted. However, if you hold down the shift key while deleting, it is gone for good, bypassing the Deleted Items folder. This trick works in many places throughout Windows. In Explorer, if you hold down shift while deleting a file, it does not go to the recycle bin. Kill it with Shift + Delete.
-Gabe Fineman