In Microsoft Office, it will redo the previous command, if it wasn’t undo. Less useful is Ctrl-Y, which is generally known as redo. (Of course, it won’t work if you used Shift-Delete to delete files, but Windows already warned you about that.) If you accidentally deleted a bunch of files, Ctrl-Z will restore them from the bin. If you accidentally deleted a paragraph in a document, Ctrl-Z will undo that command and restore it.

It doesn’t always work, but it works often enough to be worth a try. Ctrl-ZĮverybody makes mistakes, so everybody should know the Ctrl-Z or “undo” command. The Mac does have a Control key but it was used to provide a right mouse-click in the days of one-button Apple mice.įor the record, the Windows shortcut for a right mouse-click is Shift-F10, but you’ll probably never use it. On Macs, the Command (Cmd) key generally does the same job as the Control key in Windows, so the equivalent shortcut is Cmd-S. Hitting Ctrl-S takes a fraction of a second. It takes time to move a mouse pointer to the File menu, click it, then select Save. The idea of losing an hour or even a day’s work is ridiculous. Do that and you should never lose more than a paragraph or two even if there’s a power glitch. It should be a reflex action to hit Ctrl-S whenever you pause when creating a document. The most useful example is Ctrl-S, which is the Save command.

Many are now part of my “motor memory” so I don’t even have to think about them. I started computing before mice were widely available, making keyboard shortcuts essential.

All hotkeys windows 10