Ctrl+Shift+Esc

One thing that I'd like to blog about in this space are useful keyboard shortcuts that I come across. (I favor working with the keyboard as opposed to the mouse when it makes sense to do so, as it is often more efficient.)

One shortcut that my brother (Jeremy, owner and developer of Rentlinx, and an overall very sharp guy) hadn't seen before that I showed him recently was Ctrl+Shift+Esc to bring up Task Manager (on Windows machines). This is a slightly quicker way to get to Task Manager than going through the security dialog that is brought up by a press of Ctrl+Alt+Del (on machines that do not use the "Welcome Screen").

Another more basic but very useful keyboard shortcut is the use of the Shift key to select text. Holding down Shift and using the arrow keys or other navigation keys (such as Home or PageUp) selects the text between the current position of the caret and the new position. Holding Ctrl+Shift along with the left or right arrow selects an entire word at a time.

Selecting text with the keyboard in this manner is often faster than selecting text with the mouse, and can be more precise as well, particularly in applications such as some Microsoft Outlook versions where the app annoyingly (at times) attempts to be "smart" about selecting text and automatically selects to the end of the current word when you are midway through selecting the word, which in some cases is not the behavior you want.