Shortcuts

We all love shortcuts.  Although we have been cautioned about taking shortcuts in life - we should definitely take advantage of them in technology!  Today's Tech. Tip is all about shortcuts I use on a daily/weekly basis at school. 

For those of you that use a projector in the classroom, have you ever had trouble showing just a certain image or paragraph?  Even harder, getting the projected text/graphic large enough to be seen by the students? 

• While on a website,  Ctrl  +  will enlarge the screen (scroll up or down to center your image/text).  It will work multiple times, and can be reversed with Ctrl -
• While in a document you have scanned or written, Ctrl and your mouse finger wheel will zoom in and out.  It is in zoom mode, so you aren't actually editing your font size.

While at a Fred Pryor seminar, I learned some Microsoft Office shortcuts too.  As you can imagine, there are many.  Their advice is to choose a short list (5-7) of those you think will be most helpful in your daily life.  Put only 1 shortcut on a small sticky note in the corner of your monitor.  You will quickly find out if it isn't helpful, not used often, OR ... you master it (use it a lot).  When it becomes second nature to use without reference to the sticky note, you are on to your next short cut sticky note.  I found this very helpful, and of course I taught my class a few too.  Here are some of my first sticky notes:

EXCEL

• F11  creates a chart (graph) for any data in range
• Ctrl Home  moves to the beginning of a worksheet (usually A1)
• Ctrl 9 (not F9) hides selected rows.  This was very helpful in printing out one student's data without showing other students' information.  And you aren't moving or cutting any data from your worksheet. 

WORD

• F7   check your grammar and spelling
• Shift F7  is the thesaurus. 
• Ctrl u   will underline the a typed word, or remove the underline from a word.
• Ctrl PgDn   will not only go a page down, it goes to the TOP of the next page.
• Shift F3  will capitalize a typed word, repeated will change all word's letters to capital, or repeated again will take capitalization away.

Another "Ah-ha!" I had during the Microsoft seminar was discovering what the pushpin icons were.  You know...when you go to the Microsoft button in the top left corner (drop down menu appears) and the last 15 documents or spreadsheets you had open are listed on the right?  Well, clicking the pushpin on the far right next to the file name will KEEP it on the list until you undo the pushpin.  Since learning this, I use the pushpin on frequently used documents such as class roster or newsletter template. 

Again, I'm only sharing those things that are tried and true for me.  If you'd like the entire (user-friendly) listing for Microsoft Excel or Word take a look at http://www.computerhope.com/shortcut/excel.htm  (or replace excel with 'word')