Summary
Have you ever wondered how some people breeze through their work, almost as if they’re in a trance? Chances are they are 1) really good at keyboarding (70+ wpm with few errors) and 2) they use a lot of keyboard shortcuts (100+ different shortcuts).   There is no shortage of wisdom around shortcuts in general, mostly saying that taking shortcuts isn’t worth it – you’ll end up paying for taking shortcuts later on down the road.  Keyboard shortcuts are one of the biggest exceptions to that wisdom – there are several benefits that we’ll discuss earlier, but the most obvious and biggest benefit is saving time.
In this article, we’ll discuss key thoughts around using keyboard shortcuts, including these takeaways:
- Why keyboard shortcuts are important
- Types of keyboard shortcuts
- How to learn and use keyboard shortcuts
- Building your own keyboard shortcuts
- Some of my personal favorite keyboard shortcuts
Why Keyboard Shortcuts are Important
Early on in my career, I worked out of town for eight straight weeks on an urgent, special project – correcting fraudulent accounting records. This was just a couple years after the collapse of Enron, so you can imagine how exciting it was! There were hundreds of us flying in from around the country, segregated into several different functional groups. Even at a big corporate campus, there wasn’t a lot of space for all these extra people. My group of 40 or so shared an area you’d normally see 10-15 people working in – there was not much space. So little space that I could barely use the mouse! I was working in Excel for 10 hours a day, and any little thing I could learn to work faster made a huge impact. Keyboard shortcuts were a huge part of that – the staples (open, save, close, copy, paste), navigation (moving between sheets, selecting data), and I even made some of my own for actions where I couldn’t find a shortcut (colors, number formats, comments). I’m very thankful for this time because I set some good habits that I’ve built on over the years.
Here are the benefits I’ve found from using keyboard shortcuts, some of which we’ll break down in further detail:
- They save time – often small bits of time that add up throughout the day
- They require less thinking and brainpower
- They result in less errors
- They result in less fatigue on your hands and wrists
- They can perform actions you otherwise couldn’t
They save time
If you’ve ever intentionally used a keyboard shortcut, you probably did so because it was easier – and faster. But just how much faster? Studies tend to find that 2-4% of time is wasted each day that could be saved if keyboard shortcuts were used for common tasks. That adds up to several days a year! Now that’s more of an average, considering common keyboard shortcuts. Personally, I feel they save me 10%+ of my working time, when you consider the lesser-common and build-your-own shortcuts. When you combine this with the keyboarding fluency in general, it’s a heck of a 1-2 punch for efficiency. If you’re a producer of documents, spreadsheets, presentations, or anything really, make it a priority to learn keyboard shortcuts to save a lot of time.
Why are they faster? Well, just think about working without them. First, you have to literally move your hand to the mouse from the keyboard. Then, you have to move the cursor to where you want to click or hover.  Then you often have to follow to a sub-menu (or multiple of them) to find the ultimate command. The keyboard shortcut takes care of all of that in one step (or in the case of Alt-key based shortcuts, possibly multiple steps – more on that later).
They require less thinking and brainpower
Have you ever found yourself just mentally exhausted at the end of the day? One of my friends calls this “tired brain” and when he gets there, he stops working because he knows the odds are high of making negative progress (through errors that create rework). This is because of all the big decisions made throughout the day, but also the micro-decisions (move mouse here, then here, then here, then here…). Once you commit keyboard shortcuts to memory, you can generally use them without thinking hardly at all. That valuable brainpower can be saved for more critical thinking.
They result in less errors
Pressing the keys is more of a gross motor skill, whereas moving the mouse and clicking on an icon or button is more of a fine motor skill – the keys are less forgiving since you can click any part of the key. Just look at the buttons in the screenshot below – these little arrows for “more options” are frustratingly hard to click, aren’t they? Surely you’ve missed and clicked something nearby instead more than a few times.
They result in less fatigue on your hands and wrists
The more you move your mouse around and the more you click and scroll with it, the more you’re straining your hand and wrist. Keyboard shortcuts cut down on the overall number of movements, actions, etc., but each action is less stressful on your hands and wrists as well, especially if you’re using an ergonomic keyboard and good form.
They can perform actions you otherwise couldn’t
Have you ever seen someone in a spreadsheet or document scroll endlessly for the mouse? After a few seconds, it just becomes painful. With enough rows, pages, etc., it would take several minutes or more, and I doubt anyone is going to sit through that – likely they are just going to give up. But with a keyboard shortcut, they could select data or scroll to the end of it with ease. Likewise, often the action you want to perform doesn’t have a native menu option or command for it at all. In many applications, you can actually build that command, and add it to a keyboard shortcut! This is where you can save tremendous amounts of time – combining lots of steps into one easy step, triggered by a keyboard shortcut. Here’s a simple example I like to use – I have a keyboard shortcut for an Excel macro that adds autofilter, freeze panes, bolds the headers, and auto-sizes the column widths. At the very least, that’s 8 mouse clicks and 4 cursor moves. Just imagine all the tasks you perform – big and small – that could be automated or at least streamlined into fewer steps.
Types of Keyboard Shortcuts
Most keyboard shortcuts tend to fall into these categories:
- Navigation – moving between sheets, pages, slides, tabs, files, etc.
- Selecting data – cells, columns, rows, ranges, words, sentences, paragraphs, etc.
- Formatting – colors, fonts, sizes, number formats, borders, alignments, print settings, etc.
- Actions – saving, new, delete, printing, copy, paste, cut, undo, redo, refresh, etc.
Within those categories, keyboard shortcuts can work at different levels:
- The operating-system level (i.e. Windows key+l for lock screen)
- Similarly across different applications (i.e. Shift+arrows to select adjacent cells/characters)
- Specific to an application (i.e. in Excel, Shift+spacebar to select the active row(s))
Another interesting type of keyboard shortcut leverages the Alt key to traverse menus. An example is Alt-h-v-v to paste values only in Excel. This tends to work in most applications. You can string together characters in succession to perform commands as if you used the mouse to navigate through the menus. Some people swear by these shortcuts, but I’ve personally never used them much…maybe it was too many keys to remember!
How to Learn and Use Keyboard Shortcuts
Learning keyboard shortcuts is pretty straightforward – once you are aware of the shortcut and use it enough times, it becomes second-nature. So what’s the point of this being its own section then? Just because it’s easy doesn’t mean we can’t discuss some tips for success. We covered the why above, now we’re going to cover the how. It all starts with awareness. Having at least a subconscious awareness of what you are doing and how you are doing it is key to improving your efficiency.
For at least one day, track all the unique tasks, commands, and actions you perform using the mouse. I recommend using Excel for this – it’s great for small lists like this where you may want to quickly sort or filter later. Don’t double-count these – you’d probably take longer listing them than actually getting anything done. The key is building a unique list of the common tasks you perform where you aren’t already using keyboard shortcuts. You may want to track these for several days – that’s totally fine. For each one, label it a frequency – high, medium, or low (or whatever values you want). For at least the high ones, find a keyboard shortcut. Look at the menus, search the web, or leverage the lists below. Put them on sticky notes and practice them over a week, and they’ll become second-nature.
This approach to tracking things – errors that are made, things you often forget, or other areas of improvement – can work wonders. The simple act of writing it down puts it in your subconscious, and having the list to reflect on helps you set goals and measure your progress in achieving those goals.
Here’s another tip – leverage lists of common keyboard shortcuts. Print one or more of these out, circle the ones you want to practice, and mark them off when you’ve learned them.
- The labels on your keyboard (if it has them)
- Windows shortcuts: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/keyboard-shortcuts-in-windows-dcc61a57-8ff0-cffe-9796-cb9706c75eec
- Mac shortcuts: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201236
- Office app shortcuts: Excel version / PDF version
Some specific keys to keep in mind are: Esc, Tab, Ctrl, Shift, Windows, and the F1-F12 keys. These are often used in keyboard shortcuts. Even if you aren’t using keyboard shortcuts, leveraging the keyboard however you can (tab between fields, leverage search suggest, type the first few letters of a file name to jump to it in a window, etc.) and minimizing your use of the mouse (aside from maybe scrolling), is a huge productivity boost!
Building Your Own Keyboard Shortcuts
Chances are for most of the actions you routinely perform, there’s already a keyboard shortcut available. If not, the Alt key approach might be available. There’s also the option of building your own shortcuts – within a specific application or at the operating system level. Lastly, within the XLEV8 add-in suite, you can specify which keyboard shortcuts you want to use in Excel and Word (and PowerPoint with a third-party add-in). Be careful setting your own keyboard shortcuts – make sure not to overwrite the ones you already use (i.e. Ctrl+c to copy)!
Building application-level keyboard shortcuts
The first keyboard shortcut I ever made was to highlight the selected cells yellow in Excel. I found myself doing that over and over again, so I recorded my actions and assigned it to Ctrl+y as the shortcut. I made many similar small macros/shortcuts after that, and you can do the same. Many apps allow you to record your actions and assign keyboard shortcuts to them, or assign keyboard shortcuts to existing commands. If you do this, make sure to save the macro in a place where it’s available for all files (not just the active file), so you can reuse it, if you so desire. I highly recommend keeping a list of these in case you ever need to troubleshoot, or just so you know what keyboard shortcuts are left that you can assign!
Building operating system-level keyboard shortcuts
There’s some serious power here. Virtually anything can be scripted if you’re up for it. For Windows, I’ve dabbled a little with AutoHotKey (https://www.autohotkey.com/) and I’ve had great results. It’s much more than keyboard shortcuts but that’s often what people do – script or combine many actions down to a keyboard shortcut. It also works with the mouse keys! It’s open source, free to use, and extremely well-documented internally and throughout the internet at large. For Mac users, Keyboard Maestro (http://www.keyboardmaestro.com/main/) and similar solutions are available but full disclosure – I haven’t used these.
Defining XLEV8 add-in keyboard shortcuts
After a few years into my career, I ran out of available keys for shortcuts. I was also frustrated that every time I switched to a new computer, I had to reassign all the keyboard shortcuts. Those are two of the reasons I built the XLEV8 add-in suite – many of the shortcuts are combined and you can assign them in bulk (and save the settings to reassign later!). There are hundreds of macros of all kinds throughout the suite, mostly in Excel, that act as quick shortcuts or automate bulk actions. With all of them, you can set and reset whatever keyboard shortcuts you want, one at a time or in bulk! See the video below for a quick demo of how this works.
My Favorite Keyboard Shortcuts
- Alt+Tab – toggle between open windows
- Windows+d – minimize all windows and show the desktop
- Windows+l – locks the screen (alternative to Ctrl+Alt+Delete)
- Ctrl+c / Ctrl+v – copy / paste
- Ctrl+f / Ctrl+h – find / replace
- Ctrl+PageUp / Ctrl+PageDown – move forward/backward in Excel sheets, browser tabs, etc.
- Ctrl+y [custom Excel] – toggles through five different cell fill colors, starting with yellow
- Ctrl+Shift+F [custom Excel] – runs the Filter Picker, offering several quick filter commands
- Ctrl+Shift+P [custom Excel] – runs the Print Picker, offering several quick print commands
- Ctrl+Shift+W [custom Excel] – runs the Search Macros box, making every XLEV8 macro accessible within a few keystrokes
If you have your own keyboard shortcut thoughts or your favorite lesser-known keyboard shortcut, please share in the comments below!
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