4 Basic Computing Tips and Tricks

If there is one thing that computer users, advanced and brand new alike, can agree upon it is that they love shortcuts.

Any trick or tool that can help shorten the time it takes them to do anything is an extremely helpful tool that they will make use of at every available opportunity.

Here are 4 useful tips and tricks, both time-saving and just plain helpful to know, for any computer user to know:

Open task bar programs with the keyboard

Many users will have a collection of different programs they use regularly and will populate their task bar with these programs so they can open them much more quickly in order to save time. But, what many people don't know is that it's possible to open some of these programs with little more than a button press.

The first 10 shortcuts on the task bar are all assigned to a number key and pressing the windows key plus the corresponding shortcut will open the program in question.

Quickly open a new instance of a program

Most users who need to open a new instance of a program will simply click on the icon or right click on the task bar icon and click on the appropriate indicator.

This is, however, not the easiest way to do this. The simplest method for opening a new copy of a program is to hold down the shift key while clicking on it normally.

Pin commonly used items to jump lists

Quite a few users are aware of the ability to pin folders to the quick access section in the file explorer, but not everyone is aware that you can do something similar to files for programs using jump lists. Jump lists are those items that come up in a list when you right click on a task bar icon.

If you have items that you are regularly making use of and want it to stay on the jump list then just drag it onto the program's icon or (if it is currently in the recent list and you want it to stay there) just click on the pin to the right of the item in question.

Make your own keyboard shortcuts

Of all the features found in computers, keyboard shortcuts are one of the most useful. Rather than clicking through a dozen menus to be able to get rid of a program's shortcut, all you need to do is hit a combination of keys. What most people don't know about these shortcuts is that you can make your own.

Any icon for a shortcut or file can open a properties window through the right-click menu and one of the available items on that list is called Shortcuts. It contains a list of fields: where the targeted file is, a start location and the shortcut key for that program. You can use this to make any program or file open using any keyboard shortcut that is not already a natural part of windows and used for something else.

These tips can help save you a great deal of time in your daily computer usage.