The first Wednesday of every November is International Keyboard Shortcut Day. This Wednesday, people from all over the world will become far less efficient for a short time in an effort to be far more efficient the rest of the year.

“WASD V2 88-Key ISO Custom” by Bitboxer is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

This year I’ll be starting all of my programs with the keyboard. First, I’m going to hide the Cortana search bar because that’s just a waste of real estate. Ironically, the best way to do this is with your mouse. Right-click on the taskbar, choose Cortana, and Hidden.

Now let’s pin some frequently used applications to the taskbar. Start the application however you normally would. Find the icon in your taskbar, right-click on it, and choose Pin to Taskbar.

I have eight applications pinned to my taskbar. I can open these using the Windows key and the number representing that applications position in the taskbar. For me Outlook is first, so I would use Windows+1 to open Outlook.

Every morning, I unlock my computer, hold down the Windows key, and press 2, 3, 5, and 7. This opens all the programs that I leave running all day. I never close Outlook because of all the client side rules I have, but I include Win+1 to that process after a reboot. I used to open #4 every day, but that’s fallen out of favor. But I don’t want to remove it and change the positions or all the other icons.

In addition to opening the program, Win+number switches to that application if it’s already running. If that application already has the focus, it gets moved to the back of the line and hidden. Just press the shortcut again to bring it back to the front. If you have multiple instances running, like multiple Word docs or Excel files, continue holding down the Windows key and pressing the number to cycle through all the documents. When the one you want is at the front, release the Win key.

One more thing about the taskbar: let’s say you have a bunch of File Explorer windows open, which you no doubt opened using Win+E. To close them all at once, press Win+Alt+number to get a context menu and choose Close All Windows. I don’t have File Explorer pinned to my taskbar, so its position in the list isn’t the same every time. But it’s usually ninth or tenth. In this example, it’s tenth so I use Win+Alt+0 to bring up the context menu.

You might have also noticed that you could have used the Win+Alt context menu to pin the application to the taskbar instead of right clicking. If you did, you get an IKSD bonus.

OK, last tip before you’re on your way to a great keyboarding day. If you want to open a program that’s not pinned to the task bar, press and release the windows key and start typing the application’s name. For instance, if I want to open Powerpoint, I press and release Win and type power.

Windows shows you everything that has power in the name or description. The “best match” is usually what I’m looking for, but you can see that you can also get to PowerShell or the power settings control panel using this method. If you have some recently used documents, those will also appear. When I type ues to open Ultra Edit Studio, it shows me a few documents I used recently.

I hope you use these techniques on Wednesday to open your applications using your keyboard and become a little more productive. Happy keyboarding.

In the grand tradition of Keyboard Shortcut Metrics and More Keyboard Metrics, here’s this:

Procedure	2016	2017	2018	Grand Total
MakeComma	20.54%	18.67%	19.01%	19.19%
WrapSheetsDown	13.80%	17.15%	9.93%	14.93%
WrapSheetsUp	8.60%	15.36%	7.33%	12.16%
FillVirtualScreen	10.50%	11.04%	8.42%	10.40%
CopyPasteValues	14.00%	4.84%	2.20%	6.54%
ShowFormatting	5.85%	5.13%	7.04%	5.68%
IncrementDate	4.25%	4.08%	9.77%	5.23%
MarkYellow	4.55%	5.44%	5.29%	5.20%
SelectAdjacentCol	4.87%	4.71%	6.19%	5.04%
DecrementDate	3.56%	1.87%	11.93%	4.24%
GetMappedAddress	2.39%	2.21%	2.73%	2.35%
FrozenHome	2.26%	2.39%	2.32%	2.34%
MakeTable	0.00%	1.80%	4.07%	1.81%
ChangeSign	2.03%	1.35%	0.77%	1.40%
FillSeries	0.49%	1.38%	1.99%	1.28%
CopySum	2.22%	1.18%	0.33%	1.27%
ConvertColumnToText	0.00%	0.63%	0.00%	0.36%
SelectPrecedents	0.00%	0.46%	0.12%	0.29%
SwitchAggregate	0.00%	0.24%	0.49%	0.23%
MatchColumnWidths	0.10%	0.06%	0.08%	0.07%
Grand Total	100.00%	100.00%	100.00%	100.00%

Look at DecrementDate making a charge.

As you know, I love keyboard shortcuts. But I hate entering dates. So I created this little helper. In my new accounting system, they also have shortcut keys for incrementing weeks, months, and years. I don’t have much use for incrementing weeks, but I could kick myself for not thinking of the others. Plus Alt+semi-colon is just sitting there doing nothing.

The first Wednesday of every November is International Keyboard Shortcut Day. Today people from all over the world will become far less efficient for short time in an effort to be far more efficient the rest of the year.

The end of inefficiencies. Am I right?

To celebrate this year, I took my wall calendar off my wall and I’ll use Win+Alt+D to view the Windows calendar. My usual method to see an electronic calendar is to Alt+Tab to Outlook and Ctrl+2 to switch to the calendar (Ctrl+1 switches you back to the inbox (or wherever you were in Mail)). I also might Win+1 to get there because Outlook is the first icon on my taskbar. That’s less desirable, though, because Outlook doesn’t always play nice. Sometimes it’s not on month view and it’s a pain to get it to look like I want. So I’ll try out my new found Win+Alt+D to use the built-in Windows calendar.

If you just want to get your feet wet, head over to True Insights and download the The Ultimate Excel 2016 Keyboard Shortcut List. It’s an Excel workbook listing all the shortcuts you’ll ever need. And because it’s in Excel, it’s sortable and filterable. Find one you like and try to put it to use today. Thanks Jacques for putting the list together.

Want to kick it up a notch? Set aside some time today where you only navigate windows folders with the keyboard. Here are some tips to get you started:

• Turn on autocomplete in File Explorer. Press the Win key and start typing Internet Options. When the app shows up, arrow down to it and press enter. Use Ctrl+tab to get to the Advanced tab. Page Down and arrow down about 1/3 of the way and select Use inline AutoComplete in File Explorer and Run Dialog. Finally tab to the OK button and press Enter.
• Win+E will open a new Windows Explorer window. Once there, Alt+D will put you in the address bar.
• As you start typing, Windows will autocomplete folder names. If you type C:\u, Windows will likely autocomplete to C:\Users. Then you can press Tab to complete the entry or arrow down to a different entry if there is more than one. It would be nice if Windows would insert a \ for you, put you have to type that yourself.

Really want to show off? Create your own shortcut key in Excel using Appliction.OnKey. Put it in your PMW or in your general purpose utility addin. Mine is called UIHelpers.xlam. I use 27 different Appliction.OnKey lines in my Auto_Open procedure. Here are a few of my favorites:

See Incrementing Dates and Times for what those do. I don’t think I ever posted GetMappedAddress, so here it is.

It just puts the full path of the active workbook in the clipboard. I use it all the time to create a hyperlink in Outlook or to add it as an attachement. I just paste the full path in the File Name box and I don’t have to navigate to where the file is.

That’s a big long path pasted into File Name. Even though my current folder is My Documents, I just paste in that big path and hit enter and it’s done.

Finally, see Hyperlink Keyboard Shortcut Update and be sure to read the comments if you want to implement this one.

Have a great IKSD and leave a comment with how you’ll be celebrating.

Another November. Another first Wednesday. Another International Keyboard Shortcut Day. The day when people from all over the world become far less efficient in an effort to be more efficient the rest of the year.

Let’s mix it up a bit this year. Instead of me listing various levels of participation, I want to turn you into an evangelist. No, you won’t be required to best the devil in a fiddle playing contest or anything like that.

Today, tell someone else about a keyboard shortcut you like. You can, for example, casually mention to a co-worker how much you enjoy what this guide says for using hyperlinks since you learned the Ctrl+K shortcut.

Even better, you could exclaim loudly throughout the office how you wish there was an easier way to switch worksheets in Excel. Someone may yell back “Just use Ctrl+PgUp and Ctrl+PgDn” thereby educating the whole office. If nobody yells back, find a willing confederate and give him the answer and instructions about how to yell back.

Dramatic reenactments are another effective method of communication. Stage a skit in the cafeteria about an office worker at her wit’s end. You see, she has such a long list of sub-folders under her Inbox and the one she wants to click is never in view. She always has to scroll. Then she learns about Ctrl+Y and, later that day, becomes the CEO.

You might hear things like “Get out of my office!” or “Stop shouting. We’re trying to work here!”. Don’t be discouraged. Our message must be heard.