The Joel on Software Discussion Group

- F2 renames in explorer; edits cell in Excel, etc.
- Ctrl - Num Pad + makes the columns fit their contents
- Perforce is absolutely free for 5 clients, install it on your personal machine!  I use it for versioning all types of files, including my web site.  It is super easy to set up and maintain.

Those are useful ones... not so useful but interesting: Win-Tab is a variant of Alt-Tab in Windows; try it.

Your tips?

Use gmail keyboard shortcuts

<WIN-KEY>-L locks your workstation.

Thanks for that workstation lock..  didn't know that one.

Windows-R gets the run dialog up - but everyone knows that.

But, Windows-R Desktop, Windows-R My Documents, Windows-R Control Panel, Windows-R Recent Documents all work and do what you'd expect. (Except on a few computers where they don't - I've no idea why not, but it seems to work on about two-thirds of the computers I try)

<WIN-KEY>-E brings up Windows Explorer.  I use this constantly.

[Win]+Pause opens System Properties

Win+D shows the desktop (minimizes all windows).

Under the control panel, on the Keyboard Properties, set your keyboard "Repeat Delay" to the fourth peg: "Short", and your "Repeat Rate" to the "Fast" setting.

This helps in all sorts of ways, but most noticeable in that it completely eliminates the need to do the "taptaptaptaptaptap" series of keystrokes when maneuvering around with the arrowkeys.

So by example, using the default settings you are able to type:


DDDDD

With the new settings, it's something like:

DDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD


Or more dramatically, this:

D

becomes:

DDDDDDDDDDDD



...hmm, that didn't turn out so well. Anyway, try it; it's awesome.

Cool ...

Need a place that tests on this ... and by testing can also engrave this stuff on my brain.

ALT-ENTER puts a hard break in an Excel cell.

$m in your prompt shows the server the active drive is mapped to.  If you need to map the same drives to a lot of different servers depending on what you are doing, it can prevent a lot of confusion.

Buy Direct Access from Nagarsoft.  It allows tech you type anywhere to be linked with several types of actions including opening a website or program, and text replacement.  It gets me from the program I am working in, to the program I want to be working in very quickly.

My keyboard also has programmable keys that I can tie to running a program.

Here is a list of RUN commands that can make your life easier.

http://smartbro.blogspot.com/2006/09/117-run-commands-in-windows-xp.html

And if you couple those with SlickRun, you can do quite a bit.  http://www.bayden.com/slickrun/

Create a new Notepad file.  Type .log and close the file.

From that point on, every time you open the file it will bring you to the end and automatically enter a timestamp ... great for keeping a log of your daily activities!

It needs to be .LOG (caps)

cmd prompt accepts wildcards for dir navigation.

c:\>cd pr*

cds into c:\program files\

or if you've got lots of dirs that begin with "pr" press tab and it cycles through each one,

c:\>cd "program files"
c:\>cd "pr0n"
c:\>cd "pros"


you can also do things like this:

cd p*\Skype

to cd into c:\program files\skype

For a while I thought this was common knowledge, but lately I've run into a number of people who were excited to find out about the rand() function inside word.

Just type =rand() anywhere in your word doc to autocreate a block of text. For more text, pass it a numeric parameter like rand(2) 200 appears to be the max value.

The text is different in different versions of Word, but unfortunately it's the same QuickBrownFox block. It helps if you just need a big text file to test off of, but you can't rely on it to discover many edge cases.

Another is vertical text selection. Usually when you want to highlight text, you want to do it horizontally, but if you hold down the ALT Key and then try to highlight text, you can do so vertically. This has saved me a rediculous amount of time fixing Comma Delimited Files.

People that navigate through explorer or the registry with the mouse expanding each node, one by one by one....drives me nuts!

arrow keys + quickly typing the name of the node you want gets you home sooner.

I'm sure everyone here knows that one.

My final one (for now) is:

"DO NOT TOUCH THE FRICKING SCREEN!!"

If you need to create your own shortcuts, you can use this free tiny app:

http://www.bcheck.net/apps/hoe.htm

Good luck in figuring out the proper messaging to your apps (anybody know an app to help me do this?).

For example, add this to your .INI to pause/unpase WinAmp via WinKey+P, and yes, this works when the app is NOT focused.

~P=Msg|Winamp v1.x|273|40046 ; pause winamp

I'm sure you can create some pretty powerfull shortcuts with HoeKey

Shift+Ctrl+Space in Word puts a hard-space between words, grouping them together.  This prevents line-breaks from separating your adjoined words.

In windows, typing
start .
at the command prompt

will spawn an explorer window of the current directory your in.

Similar to pmuhC's wildcard in the command prompt for navigation is the tab key.

Enter
c:\>cd pr
then hit tab shows
c:\>cd "\Program Files"
Hit tab again will show the next directory, as in
c:\> cd Pzdir

<Shift>tab goes reverse alphabetical if you go to far.

Win+M minimizes all windows except any that have modal dialogs open, or any non-modal dialogs (but will minimize the window that spawned the non-modal dialog). It's similar to Win+D, but the subtle difference is occasionally useful if you want to clean up your desktop and go back to an open dialog.

The following registry entry gives you an "Open DOS prompt at Folder" context menu command.

Open this folder in Regedit:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/Software/Classes/Folder/Shell

Create a new key named DosPrompt. Enter in the default string property the prompt that you want to appear on the context menu item. (IE: Open DOS &Prompt at Folder).

Create a key under this named "command". Set the following string as the default data for this key:

c:\windows\system32\cmd.exe /k cd %1

To use it, right click in Explorer over any folder icon. You will see this command. If you select it, a DOS window will open up, set to that directory as its working directory.

There are several versions of this hack that are floating around the internet. This is what is on my own system.

+Direct Access.
One of the best time saving tools I've ever seen - bought.

A great time saver for me in MS Excel is to use Ctrl + ~. This key combo converts formulas results to the actual formulas so you can quickly review them.

Using the combo again toggles the formulas back to their default values.

in vim:
:.!date
will time-stamp the entry

I'm sure many know this, but some wont ...

In Firefox (and others) you can really speed yourself up by learning:

Alt-D : Focus the address bar
Ctrl-K : Focus the search bar
<sitename> Ctrl-Enter : Adds a www. & .com
/ <type something> : Vim style search
Ctrl - R: refresh (great for web development after an Alt-Tab from the editor / build window)

Force yourself to use the keyboard to do all of those for a week, and notice how your browsig speeds up. :)

Great post btw!

Not a tip but a question

Ok the .LOG one in notepad, very cool, but when I click the X I get asked are you sure you want to save this file?

Anyway to set that to always say yes so I don't get asked anymore?

Alt-Esc .. well, see http://discuss.joelonsoftware.com/default.asp?joel.3.31928.22

in Firefox, if you are working on a page and just care about the HTML source of that file, simply open the source once, and then refresh the source only (similar to a webpage: with CTRL+R), instead of reloading the whole webpage and then view source again.

Ctrl+Shift+Esc opens up the task manager.

There is a great list of keyboard shortcuts for Windows Xp available from Microsoft at  http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;301583

If you have a dialog box which has
'Yes/Yes to All/No' button (notice there is no 'No to All' button, hold Shift while clicking on 'No' to simulate 'No to All'.

Quick heads-up, one of the links on this page links to http://discuss.joelonsoftware.com/default.asp?joel.3.31928.22

One of the comments on that page refers to a program called winkey.  The download link referring to download.com does not work, yet the other one does. 

Further investigation indicates that program was deemed spyware (or worse) and hence removed.  Siteadvisor calls that application a red download.  Perhaps someone ('Joel'?) should remove that link (page is archived, so note left here).

alt-enter brings up the properties of most windows items - icons, files, whatnot.

If you need to get the full path of a file that is in an explorer view, do a  WinKey+R then drag the file icon to the Run window and the entire fill path will be in the Run textbox to copy, edit, etc.

CTRL+ARROW to move the cursor an entire word left or right.
CTRL+SHIFT+ARROW to highlight entire words at a time.

Ok this was posted by Joel himself some years ago and i love it:

When u have a messagebox (a.k.a alert) hitting CTRL-C will copy the text of the messagebox to the clipboard.

Dragging the icon in the Address bar of an Explorer window into a CMD window copies the contents of the address bar into the command prompt.

for all you database developers.  to find out a connection string for a db, right-click on your desktop and do a 'new text document.' rename the extension to '.udl'.  then right click and choose 'properties' and set the connection up.  then open the .udl file in any text editor and there you go!

Rather than dragging the entire Applications folder to the right side of your Dock, create a folder inside your home folder, then drop aliases (option-apple-drag) into that folder.  Move that folder onto the right side of your Dock, and presto, you have a customizable one-click access to whatever applications you use frequently but aren't already in your Dock.

Download Synergy from http://synergy2.sourceforge.net/ to share a single mouse and keyboard across multiple machines and monitors over the network.

It's multiplatform, so I use it to share the same keyboard between my Windows box and Solaris workstation (there isn't a Solaris version on the site but I've found it compiles quite nicely under Solaris 10, and FreeBSD 6-RELEASE for that matter. There are Windows and Linux prebuilds on there).

The clipboard also follows the mouse across monitors, useful for copying UNIX terminal output to an Outlook email, for example. Platform CRLF differences are taken care of, although sometimes Unicode text borks.

Great thread!

In Firefox,

-Go to the main page for this group.
-In the search box, right click and choose "Add a keyword for this Search..."
-Name it "Joel" (or whatever you want)
-Keyword = "jos" (or whatever you want)
-OK

Now in the address bar, type "jos hungarian" and it will show you all results for hungarian in these groups.

I have setup many of these.  For example, "az book" looks up "book" on Amazon, "gg foo" looks up "foo" in google groups, etc.

In Windows, if you have an icon selected you can open the program/document by pressing Enter. Everyone knows that. But did you know that if you press Alt+Enter it will open the file's Properties page?

my turn!
in explorer (or any simillar app)
which has the directory tree in the left.
goto the parent node and [Shift + *] to expand all sub-directories.
(screws up on network drives)

And any windows shortcut has the option of puttin ur own keyboard shortcut to open up
just set it so.

Looks like mine was a dupe of Sean's above. Oops!

Ctrl+<backspace> key deletes the entire previous word in MS applications. Comes in handy sometimes.

I work a lot with lists and outlines in Word. This trick helps with that a lot. Open MS Word and create a short list, type 1. This (enter), That (enter), The other(enter)

Word automatically numbers the list for you - but here is the cool part... Select "The other" press ALT + Shift and the up or down arrow and you can re - order the list with out having to cut and paste. You can select whole blocks and move them around this way too.

anybody have a pointer to consolidated list of *built in* keyboard macros for assorted manufacturer's keyboards? Used to be all keyboards had macro capability onboard.

I love holding ctrl + mouse click on links in firefox for a new tab - probably not a hardcore keystroke - but a tip that took me a while to find.

Slelect Multiple Files in Windows folder.
Righ click on any of them and select the rename option.
If you add a prefix to the name and hit Enter button, all the files selected will have that prefix.
Very useful to rename picture files according to the occasion it was clicked for!!

With the del.icio.us toolbar installed in either IE or Firefox, you can automatically add 'notes' for a link that you're saving by highlighting text before saving the page.

More Firefox tips.
Not only can you type a websites name and press Ctrl+Enter to automatically add the "www" and the ".com", use Shift+Enter for ".net" sites and Ctr+Shift+Enter for ".org sites.

In addition to Tim's post if you have a mouse 3 button (the button on the scroll wheel) that button opens links into new tabs in firefox. Quite effective.

And since im on the subject of browsers here are some kb shortcuts for mozilla/ie/opera.

http://www.mozilla.org/support/firefox/keyboard

when you delete a file or folder or whatever, hold shift when you push delete and it will skip the recycle bin.

In Microsoft Office you can quickly get the definition of of any word by holding ALT and then Left Clicking the word with your mouse.  I use this constantly for papers, etc...

Three basic Firefox 1.5 tips to get the most out of tabbed browsing:

    * Double click on the tab bar -> Open a new blank tab

    * Middle click on an open tab -> Close tab

    * Middle click on any link -> Open link in new tab in background

Middle click = click on scroll wheel if you have one instead of an middle mouse button.

If you don't have a scroll mouse, I suggest you get one. If you can't, then Ctrl-clicking does the same thing as middle clicking.

These seem like simple tips but they aren't very prominent in the documentation.

In Word, click anywhere on a table and Alt+[num-pad 5] selects the entire table

it was mentioned earlier that Win-M will minimize all the windows open and show the desktop, but pressing Shift-Win-M will restore the windows to their previous state.

CREATE TABS INSIDE WORD TABLES
In Word tables, CTRL-Tab gives you a tab. (Pressing Tab on its own just moves the cursor to the next cell).

TYPE A SINGLE GREEK LETTER
In Word, if you press CTRL-SHIFT-Q, the next letter you enter will be in Symbol font (i.e. in Greek). After that, the font will return to your normal font. This can be surprisingly handy for scientists , engineers and mathematicians.

INSERT TICKS AND CROSSES
It's handy to set Word's Autocorrect feature so that a tick symbol is displayed whenever you type in the word "tick". You can also do the same for crosses. MS Gothic font has a nice tick and cross. On occasions when you don't want Autocorrect to do its stuff, just press CTRL-Z immediately afterwards.

Ctrl D in Excel inserts the current date.

Does anybody know a shortcut to convert formatted text in the clipboard to plain text? I always have to paste crap into notepad, then re-copy.

Microsoft Word has a cool calculator tool. Select View, Toolbars, Customize. Under Tools, find Tools Calculate and drag the icon to your main menu bar. In any text, highlight numbers and formulas, then click on the Tools Calculate icon.  The results are shown on the status bar, and copied to the clipboard. Press ctrl-v to paste the results anywhere in your document.

Aaron, you need <a href="http://stevemiller.net/puretext/">Pure Text</a>.

Oops, that didn't work too well. http://stevemiller.net/puretext/

how to enable tab completion for cmd.exe windows (i.e. you type 'cd x', hit tab repeatedly, see each dir name that starts with 'x', slightly different from bash or cshell completion):

use Registry Editor (Regedt32.exe) to view the following registry key:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER/Software/Microsoft/Command Processor

Edit the CompletionChar value, and set the value of REG_DWORD to 9.

from http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;244407

Shortcut for 'create new folder' while in explorer?

Why is this #21 on reddit? how does that works???

I use keyboard shortcuts to fire up Notepad, Calc and Cmd (in my case, Ctrl-Alt-N, -X and -C respectively). Right click on the application (or its shortcut), Properties, and enter the keyboard shortcut of your choice.

Win+D, Ctrl+Space, Shift-F10 to Right-click Desktop

Ctrl+Tab to flip between pages in a page control

Alt + Tab
Toggle between open workbooks in Excel
Sept. 27, 2006

Windows Task Bar Keyboard Navigation

Ctrl-Tab lets you select the different sections of the windows task bar, including the tray.

Unless an application like Firefox is focused that intercepts this shortcut. Then hit the Windows key first to open the start menu.

To switch within a menu bar section just hit Tab. For example if you want to get to the volume icon in the tray hit [Win] [Ctrl-Tab] [Ctrl-Tab] (hit space to unhide hidden tray icons) then keep hitting [Tab] or the left and right arrow keys until you are at the desired icon.
 
hit [Space] to open the icons default menu.

Just walk throug the steps once or twice and you'll soon get the hang of it.

If you have additional tool bars enabled (like the quick launch bar) [Ctrl-Tab] to the first and then use [Tab] for each next tool bar.

In Word I do a lot of work in the outline view, which in itself is a nice tip, try it. I find it keeps me focused on the content and keeps me from messing with the layout of the document.

In outline view use [Tab] and [Shift-Tab] to change the Header level of a line. Hit [Ctrl-Shift-N] to change the line to body text.

Several very handy utilities on WinXP systems: <a href='http://www.autohotkey.com'>AutoHotkey</a> - automate almost any task / window, as well as create system-wide and application specific hotkey assignments. <a href='http://www.bayden.com/SlickRun/'>Bayden SlickRun</a> - create keywords to run applications etc (i.e., free yourself from the Start Menu). <a href='http://subversion.tigris.org/'>subversion</a> combined with <a href='http://tortoisesvn.tigris.org/'>TortoisSVN</a> - because versioning is A Beautiful Thing. These go onto every PC with which I have regular contact.

Sigh. And for non-mangled links:

Autohotkey: http://www.autohotkey.com

Bayden SlickRun: http://www.bayden.com/SlickRun/

Subversion: http://subversion.tigris.org/

TortoisSVN: http://tortoisesvn.tigris.org/

Apologies to all.

To launch any application you want from the WIN R (run command), just create a folder under c:\documents and settings\<username>\ to place copies of any application shortcut you want, then create a new User Environment Variable named PATH and point to the folder. You can then name the shortcuts whatever you want, short and sweet.  Examples:
"vpn" launch your VPN application
"fox" for Firefox
"ge" for Google Earth

You can navigate the start menu quickly by hitting the first letter of the entry you want to select. If the first letter of the entry is unique in the list it will be executed on hitting the letter key, otherwise you need to use the enter key. To go through multiple entries with the same starting letter hit the letter key repeatedly.

Additional Tip: rename entries to use unique first characters (like numbers) for often used start menu items in the quick launch list (on the left when you open the start menu), to get to them faster than any mouse user ever could. Just hit [Win] [<First Character>]

You can also do this with nested lists like the "All Programs" menu to quickly access an entry just hit [Win] [P] [Enter] and the unique number or character sequence to get at the item you want.

For example: after installing Open Office at the default menu location the programs wil be located under "All Programs" > OpenOffice.org 2.0. The problem is, is that all Open Office shortcuts are prefixed with "OpenOffice.org " so they all start with an "O" character, you need to rename these entries by removing that prefix from each of the shortcut's names, so you end up with something like, you've guessed it:

Writer
Base
Calc
Draw
Impress
Math

To start editing an OOo document you can now use the following key sequence:
[Win] - Opens the start menu
[P] - Selects "All Programs"
[Enter] - Opens "All Programs"
[O] - Opens the Open Office program list
[W] - To start Writer or,
[B] - To start Base or,
[C] - To start Calc etc ...

Note: Removing "Printers and Faxes" from the initial start menu will save you hitting the [Enter] key. You still can get to it using the "Control Panel".

For the uninitiated you can just drag and drop any item from your All Programs menu to the quick launch list and then rename them. It won't affect the original items location or name.

Additionally it will give you hours of fun sorting through your menu and finally cleaning that mess up ;-P

Aaron, In Word, you can use Paste>Special, then select Unformatted Text.  Gets rid of all the formatting when copying text from websites.

My name is also Aaron B as well!

In MS Office (and Firefox) you can hold down the ctrl button and use mouse wheel to zoom.

If you happen to be using a clipboard manager (I use clipmate [ http://www.clipmate.com ], which I consider indispensable, but I believe there are free / open source alternatives available) you can perform 'quick and dirty' versioning of a file you're editing as simply as selecting all text in the file (usually Ctrl-A) and copying (usually Ctrl-C). This should give you a history of your edits of a file at any intervals where you have copied its contents to the clipboard. You can also use this method to version a particular function / procedure / method / paragraph / whatever, if you're working on a specific part of a file.

This may be common knowledge, but I've never met anyone who knew it.

When using an XP machine set to "fast user switching" mode press Ctrl+Alt+Del twice to switch to the oldschool NT login mode.

My fave:

Note how when moving files etc and a warning pops up with the options 'Yes', 'Yes to All' and 'No'? There is no 'Yes to All' function but if you hold down Shift while clicking 'No' it has the same effect.

I meant a 'No to All' option.

My bad.

Tip two: always proof what you've written ;)

With Direct Access you can define your own shortcuts in terms of command words.

You can type "word" to launch Word, "fire" for Firefox, "cnn" to open the CNN site and so on.
You can define your favorite commands and run them from any application.
The advantage of using command words is that they are much more easy to remember than key combination.

A small tooltips shows you when a command has been detected.

You can also use Direct Access to enter commonly typed text (a global autotext function).

Free trial available at http://www.nagarsoft.com

Here's a list of Windows commands that can be run from the command prompt

http://smartbro.blogspot.com/2006/09/117-run-commands-in-windows-xp.html

Here's a list of the Windows standard shortcuts

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;301583

Create a bookmark with this address:

javascript:document.location=location.protocol+%22//%22+location.host

and it will lead to the root folder of current domain. No need to use backspace for long paths.

Ctrl+N opens a new browser window...
I think its useful...
...

...sometimes...

Firefox has an unremarked feature that, ALONE, makes it superior to other browsers:

Hold down the CTRL key and scroll your mouse wheel to change the text size from the very smallest to the VERY LARGEST, with all variations in between.

larry morgan wrote:
Firefox has an unremarked feature that, ALONE, makes it superior to other browsers: [scroll wheel sizing change]

Opera's implementation of the same resizes all page elements. Obviously whethere you prefer this is a moot point, but it works for me.

On a united Firefox-Opera note, I find mouse gestures make browsing extremely quick and easy.

larry morgan wrote:
Firefox has an unremarked feature that, ALONE, makes it superior to other browsers: [scroll wheel sizing change]

Other Browsers? Netscape 4.0 maybe? =)

Because IE does exactly the same.

Hold shift while clicking on windows in the taskbar to select them as a group.  Right click on the last one to get a list of options (like 'Close Group') to be performed on all of them.

Really handy.

Actually the CTRL key is used to select tasbar items as a group, not SHIFT as the prev. message says.

But it is a useful tip!

Well Sergio,

Just try it on this page in IE. It won't work. Do it in FireFox: hopla.

Fix capitalization in Word:

Highlight the text, and press Shift+F3 until desired result. It allows you to select from All Caps, No Caps, Proper Case and Title Case. Much better then erasing the sentence and re-writing it.

There are several tips here for starting apps quickly. Here's my preference: Spend a couple of minutes dragging program shortuts onto the Microsoft Office Shortcut Bar, and you can have one-click access to dozens of apps. You might want to drag the bar to the side of the screen intead of the top, and turn on the Auto Hide.

A question about filename completion in Command Prompt: When 4dos did this circa 1992, you could press F10 to get multiple names (very useful when doing something like fc *.txt). Is there a way to do it in Command Prompt?

Sorry, my bad, Ctrl + tab toggles between open workbooks in Excel.

I think many people don't know you can do for loops in a cmd window. Examples:

for %n in (*.txt) do echo %n
for %n in (*) do fc %n otherdir\%n
for %n in (1 2 3) do rename file-%n.jpg newname-%n.jpg
for %person in ("joe" "bob" "ann") do somestuff.bat %person

Great for calling batch files to iterate over a list of files or directories, or anything. Can also use inside of batch files, in which case you need to double up the % symbols of course.

Actually in my last example:

for %person in ("joe" "bob" "ann") do somestuff.bat %person

the quotes are not needed unless you want them.

Clicking TAB on any Web Forms or on a list of controls will forward move the focus to the next control.

If you have to go back (in other words, to reverse move) you use the SHIFT + TAB keys.

On a lengthy document (or on a lengthy code file) if you have mistakenly pressed PageDown instead of End key or PageUp instead of Home key this trick will easily get you back to the position where you've made the last change.

Just undo the change (if it's not a big of a change) by CTRL + Z. This will take you to the location of the last undid change and there you have it.

My above posting holds true especially when you've pressed CTRL + END instead of SHIFT + END (for selecting the whole line). I happen to be on these situations the most.

Since gmail disallows mailing of .exe and .bat files, even when they are wrapped up in .zip files, I use this batch file to wrap a file for mailing through gmail. Of course file size restrictions still apply (<10MB) and this script doesn't help with those. But it helps with the other part.

save it as 'gmailit.bat' and invoke it with one argument, the nme of the file you want wrapped up.

When you download the resulting file from gmail, unzip it and follow the instructions in the readme file.

@echo off
if %1x==x goto usage
if exist readme.txt goto noclobber
echo @echo off > readme.txt
echo unzip -P yadda file-lock.dat >> readme.txt
echo del file-wrap.zip >> readme.txt
echo del file-lock.dat >> readme.txt
echo echo ignore the batch file not found warning below >> readme.txt
echo del runme.bat >> readme.txt
echo ========================================================= >> readme.txt
echo READ THIS >> readme.txt
echo ========================================================= >> readme.txt
echo To restore original file, rename this file to runme.bat, >> readme.txt
echo then run the file by entering runme on the command line >> readme.txt
echo or by double clicking on the file. The original file will >> readme.txt
echo be restored and the temporary files (including this one) >> readme.txt
echo will be deleted. >> readme.txt
echo ========================================================= >> readme.txt
set name=%1
zip -P yadda file-lock.dat %name%
zip file-wrap.zip file-lock.dat readme.txt -m
echo file file-wrap.zip is ready to upload.
goto end
:noclobber
echo file readme.txt already exists; will not overwrite. exiting.
goto end
:usage
echo usage: %0 filename
:end

Well some of those long lines got wrapped. Here it is with shorter ==== lines.

@echo off
if %1x==x goto usage
if exist readme.txt goto noclobber
echo @echo off > readme.txt
echo unzip -P yadda file-lock.dat >> readme.txt
echo del file-wrap.zip >> readme.txt
echo del file-lock.dat >> readme.txt
echo echo ignore the batch file not found warning below >> readme.txt
echo del runme.bat >> readme.txt
echo ========= >> readme.txt
echo READ THIS >> readme.txt
echo ========= >> readme.txt
echo To restore original file, rename this file to runme.bat, >> readme.txt
echo then run the file by entering runme on the command line >> readme.txt
echo or by double clicking on the file. The original file will >> readme.txt
echo be restored and the temporary files (including this one) >> readme.txt
echo will be deleted. >> readme.txt
echo ========= >> readme.txt
set name=%1
zip -P yadda file-lock.dat %name%
zip file-wrap.zip file-lock.dat readme.txt -m
echo file file-wrap.zip is ready to upload.
goto end
:noclobber
echo file readme.txt already exists; will not overwrite. exiting.
goto end
:usage
echo usage: %0 filename
:end

Holding Shift+Del on a folder or file skips the Recycle Bin.

This is nice when you have a folder with lots of files in it that you want to quickly remove, alleviates the need to have to then empty the Recycle Bin.

@Dick Boogaers

"Well Sergio,
Just try it on this page in IE. It won't work. Do it in FireFox: hopla."

Ok, I'm not trying to bash Firefox or anything, but I just found it amusing that something that I do all the time in IE is described as a Firefox advantage over other browsers.

It works for me even on this page. Maybe older IE versions didn't have the feature, but IE 6.0 does it. And the upgrade is free.

Don't get me wrong I use Firefox also, but I don't think that feature alone is the reason why Firefox is better than IE (I'm not saying it's not).

A simple suggestion for mailing important exe or zip files thru gmail would be to simple rename them to some unknown/uncommon extension like EXE to .ece and .ZIP to .zop and then send em across.. ;) informing the sender to rename them back to original name.. worked for me..!! :)

keep em coming people..!!

P.S.: if u have Gmail Drive or GSpace in Firefox.. they're of extreme help too.. :).

"Ctrl D in Excel inserts the current date."

not in my version of excel. Ctrl D seams to do nothing

Ctrl d fills current cell down thru current sellection though. That with Ctrl shift down to select a coulumn makes doing formula fills very quick

In response to Shane Harter's tip on Vertical text selection, holding down the ALT key and highlighting text doesn't for me.  Is there a certain application that you're doing this in?

Several folks have mentioned Shift+F10...

if you have anything selected in windows explorer and hit shift+F10 you pull up the context menu.

Also, pertaining to Firefox (sorry if someone else caught this) and IE you can hit Control+L to directly access the address bar.

Just one more vertical selection: Ctl+Shift+F8 in Word

About Winkey: it was very good program from Copernics, no adware/spyware at all - I've used during a long time. Just look for the correct version.

There is a little known but very powerful feature in Excel (innumerous, probably, but here's one).  As you know many functions, such as Average() can take a range. But sometimes you want to do something to those cells before you average them, so you try =Average(Exp(A1:A20)) and then find out it doesn't work.  Except it will!  You just have to hold down Ctrl-Shift when you hit enter after typing in the formula and it magically works. (You'll see that the formula gets surrounded by curly braces, but typing in curly braces yourself won't work, you have to Ctrl-Shift every time you edit the formula)

in re emulating 4dos file completion:  not that I know of.  you can't make it act like csh completion circa 1978 either.

Have Explorer open into a predefined directory:
Make a shortcut of (the File-)Explorer on your desktop.
Rightclick the shotcut-icon and in the field "Destination:" that says something like "C:\WINDOWS\explorer.exe" add the folder-name thus: "C:\WINDOWS\explorer.exe /e, c:\somefolder\someotherfolder".
For more, google "explorer switches".

In excel, select anything (particularly useful for a chart image), hold down SHIFT and mouse click on the edit menu.  You now have a new option - Copy Picture. Select this and then Paste the image into another document as 'shown on screen'.  This creates a vector image of your selection that can be resized without losing resolution.  It is really usefull for copying Charts into Powerpoint.

Other Common Tasks / Switching IDs without logoff
For other common tasks that require Admin Rights Switching IDs can be VERY beneficial: You can do anything as if you were at the PC with your own admin rights.  You can add or remove programs, install devices, use system tools, change permission levels, edit network settings, change MTU, ETC

You can switch to your ID with the following process.  Note : If you do not reboot the PC, ensure you use the same process to switch back to the customer's ID when finished.

To SWITCH logon IDs:
Right click the task bar to bring up the Task Manager
Go to the Processes tab
Click Image Name to sort alphabetically
Click explorer.exe
Click End Process
Go to the Applications tab
Click New Task...
Type in: runas /user:DOMAIN\USERNAME explorer (use domain or local machine name  /  username to switch to)
Click OK
CLOSE TASK MANAGER

You will then be prompted to enter the password for that account. Be sure you enter it correctly of you will need to open task manager again and start over

Windows:

When in a command window (cmd.exe):

F7 shows selectable doskey command history
ALT-F7 clears doskey command history

"explorer ." opens explorer in current directory