Difficulty Level
Beginner
What you can do
Make selections easier and faster by using the shift and control keys.
How to do it
There are two basic scenarios when making selections:
- Text
- Files
Text Selections
When making text selections, the mouse can be very difficult to control precisely. Instead, you can make basic selections with the mouse, then use the arrow keys and the shift and control (ctrl) keys to refine selections easily and quickly. Once you get used to selecting with the keyboard, you'll find it is much faster than using the mouse.
Press [Shift] to enter 'select mode' and press the arrow keys to add or subtract from a selection.
Press [Ctrl] to enter 'word mode'. When the [Ctrl] key is pressed, and you press an arrow key, instead of moving 1 character, you will move to the next 'white space', which can be a tab, line break, or normal space.
Combine the [Shift] and [Ctrl] keys with the arrow keys to quickly select individual words.
File Selections
Often you will need to select more than 1 file in Windows Explorer (the file system browser in Windows operating systems).
To select everything from 1 file to another far down a list, use your mouse to select the first file, press [Shift] and then click on the last file. You've selected every file inbetween the two.
To select individual files, press [Ctrl] and click on each file you want to select. They are added to the selection.
Why do it?
Because it can save you a LOT of time. As mere mortals, our time is limited, so this is a good thing :-)