Certain keyboard shortcuts can be real time-savers in Windows Explorer, especially when used in conjunction with the mouse. Here are some that you may find useful.

• Hold the Alt key while double-clicking a file or folder to view the Properties sheet for that object. This is a much quicker way than right-clicking and selecting Properties.

• Hold the Shift key while double-clicking a folder icon to open an Explorer window at that location (as opposed to a single-folder window). Be careful when using this, because Shift is also used to select multiple files. The best way is to select the folder first.

• Press Backspace in an open folder window or in Explorer to go to the parent folder.

• Hold the Shift key while clicking on the close button [X] to close all open folder windows in the chain that was used to get to that folder. (This, of course, makes sense only in the single-folder view and with the “Open each folder in its own window” option turned on.)

• Select one icon, then hold the Shift key while clicking another icon in the same folder to select it and all the items in between.

• Hold the Ctrl key while clicking to select or deselect multiple files or folders, one by one. Note that you can’t select more than one folder in the folder tree pane of Explorer, but you can in the right pane. You can also use Ctrl key to modify your selection. For example, if you’ve used the Shift key or a rubber band to select the first five objects in a folder, you can hold Ctrl while dragging a second rubber band to highlight additional files without losing your original selection.

• Press Ctrl-A to quickly select all of the contents of a folder: both files and folders.

• In Explorer or any single-folder window (even in the folder tree pane), press a letter key to quickly jump to the first file or folder starting with that letter. Continue typing to jump further. For example, pressing the T key in your \Windows folder will jump to the Tasks folder. Press T again to jump to the next object that starts with T. Or, press T and then quickly press A to skip all the Ts and jump to taskman.exe. If  here’s enough of a delay between the T and the A keys, Explorer will forget about the T, and you’ll jump to the first entry that starts with A.

• Press F6 to jump between the file pane and the address bar (if it’s visible). In Internet Explorer (or Netscape or one of the Mozilla browsers, for that matter), use F6 to jump between the address bar and the page you’re viewing.

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