Life is short, which is why shortcuts were invented.
In a world which is increasingly hectic, workloads constantly growing and the feeling of life running away with us ever mounting now is a good time to cut down the time you spend on your computer working and opt for some quick and easy shortcuts to help you along the way.
Discover some of our very best tech tips below.
- Use the space bar to scroll down on web pages and the shift key to scroll back up again
- Use the Tab key to jump between boxes such as when you’re filling in your address and inserting the first line, second line, city, region and post code. Instead of manually using the mouse to click on the next box, simply press the tab key to do it for you
- For maths, on computers, * means “times” and / means “divided by”
- To jump from one open program to the next press, for Windows press Alt+Tab or for Mac use Command-Tab
- Putting something in the ‘trash’ or ‘recycle bin’ doesn’t actually delete it. It will stay stored on your hard drive and take up valuable space so regularly empty that bin folder.
- You don’t need to put www. Into your browser, before you search for something, you simply need to put the rest of the address such as independent.co.uk
- Ctrl-X (cut) Ctrl c (copy) Ctrl v (paste)
- Regularly save and back up your work, whether it be to an external hard drive or the Cloud
- When trying out an email address, it doesn’t matter if you use capital letters or not
- If you’re sending a file or image via email and you’re getting error messages saying the file is too big, head to WeTransfer.com which is a free service to send large images
- Duplicate a file icon instead of moving it, just press the Alt key as you drag it out of its window
- Extend battery life on any kind of portable devices such as a laptop, phone or tablet by turning the screen brightness down and turning off Bluetooth
- To view two screens at once, say explorer and word, simply pull one window to the right-hand side until it highlights half of the screen then select the second window you want to highlight. This only works for Windows, not Mac
- Suspicious email from your bank, eBay or PayPal, check the sender address as it may say eBay but the address is sales.ebay.com which means it is definitely not legit
- Review your privacy settings on social media regularly and the do the same if you have children
If you have any of your own unknown tips & tricks you want to share with the Accidental Team and our readers, then please feel free to get in touch today, we’d love to hear from you.