Using the ‘F’ keys
| Using the ‘F’ keys | |
27 April 2006
Though largely ignored, their unsung functions, hence the shortening to F keys, are useful keyboard shortcuts. Let’s find out what we may be missing by insisting on reaching for the mouse every time.
F1 - Help! Not quite the proverbial panic button, but in virtually all applications pressing F1 will bring up the associated Help files.
F2 - Rename. Select an icon and then press F2 to highlight the filename. Less fiddly than doing it through the menu or clicking and dragging on the filename.
F3 – Opens Windows Search
F4 – In Internet Explorer, F4 drops down the address bar menu, making it easier to retrace your steps. Faster than using the Back button or opening History.
F5 – Refresh. Updates the view of the currently open Window. Works in most applications including web browsers. Try F5 when you can’t see the change you’ve just made.
F6 – Move to the next pane in MS PowerPoint. In Internet Explorer it selects the address bar. Sometimes F6 will also allow you to skip between open Windows without all of that clicking nonsense.
F7 - Spellcheck. Launches the spelling and grammar checker in Word and other text editing software.
F8 - Selects Safe Mode if pressed during start up. Safe Mode is a trouble-shooting state whereby the computer is booted up with the minimum of drivers in order to help diagnose start up problems or software conflicts. Alt-F8, meanwhile, opens Macro selection in Word.
F9 – Zoom to 100 per cent in Publisher.
F10 – A wee cracker if your mouse stops working due to fluff in its belly button. Press F10 to highlight File and then use the arrow keys to navigate up, down and across the menus. Combine F10 with the Shift key and it brings up the sub menu as if you had right-clicked.
F11 - Full screen view in web browsers. Press again to return back to normal size.
F12 - View in web browser. Most HTML authoring packages use this command to preview web pages in your default web browser.
As you will have noticed some F keys do not have a specific job within Windows, but are often assigned functions by other software which may also allow users to do so themselves. In addition, combining an F key with Shift or Alt will also perform lots of time-saving tasks, so why not experiment, what’s the worst that can happen?
As someone who is still at primary school pointed out to me, there’s no self-destruct button on a computer keyboard. How true…
* In a previous job yours truly assigned whole wodges of oft-typed text to each of the F keys. Eventually, after much fine-tuning, it was almost possible to write an entire story just using F1 through to F12. Alas, the labour-saving macro meister-werk was relatively short-lived when the Powers That Be decided it was time to trade up to a new software package. | |