DOUBLE DUTY KEYSTROKES: WORD AND WORDPERFECT SHORTCUTS

DOUBLE DUTY KEYSTROKES:
WORD AND WORDPERFECT SHORTCUTS
Part 3

by Kendall Callas

“Quit mousing around!” has become one of my favorite slogans. It applies to Microsoft Word and WordPerfect equally. The keystrokes below are fast and less vulnerable to error than your mouse, and work identically in both programs:

RIGHT CLICK FOR MENU

Click the right mouse button for a context sensitive “QuickMenu” of commands likely for use on what your mouse is pointing to. This allows you to interrogate' items on screen and see what you can do with them, or find out what's available at that spot on the screen. Very handy at the edit screen as well as the File Open screen, editing the toolbar, or adding a date to the bar at the bottom of your screen.

USE SHIFT TO SELECT

Keystroke movements can be very handy, such as HOME/END, CTRL+HOME/CTRL+END, CTRL+ARROW. Simply add the shift key to make these movement keystrokes select as you go. SHIFT+END selects the text from the cursor to the end of line; SHIFT+CTRL+HOME selects from the cursor to the top of the document; SHIFT+CTRL+DOWN ARROW selects paragraph-by-paragraph. Now apply bold, cut or copy, etc.

TAP THE ALT KEY FOR MENU-BY-LETTER

Using the mouse pointer to select from menus on-screen is a very simple, almost intuitive, technique. Unfortunately, it's slow.

Better, use the menus by keystroke:

Tap the ALT key to activate the menu bar — your blinking cursor has now stopped blinking and in some versions of WP you'll see a visual clue at the top left of your screen. Release the ALT key.
Now, tap underlined letters to select menu items.

For example, to see your library of existing documents (File,Open), you can hunt and peck with one finger these 3 keystrokes: ALT, F, O. Since each letter stands for a meaningful word, such a series of keystrokes is easy to remember after a few repetitions — and very fast and accurate.

DOUBLECLICK SELECTS A WORD

Point with your mouse and doubleclick on a word to highlight it for your next operation.

CTRL+Z TO UNDO

Reverse your last change to the document with Ctrl+Z. This will revert to the prior stage of the document before the last edit, insertion, deletion, cut & paste, font or margin change, etc.

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