The Most Powerful Windows Keyboard Shortcut

Okay, so Ctl-C, Ctl-X and Ctl-V are really the most powerful, but at the patterns & practices summit in Redmond a couple of years ago, Peter Provost wowed the room with a keyboard shortcut that many of us had never seen before, and which I have used nearly every day since then.

 

It's Shift-Alt and the arrow keys.  This lets you re-order text, bullets, or numbered lists.

 

So if you have a bulleted list or numbered list in Word or PowerPoint that you need to re-sort, this is a no-brainer -- get the cursor on the row you want to move (or select multiple rows to move together), hold down Shift-Alt, and drive those rows around with the arrow keys.  Left and Right arrows indent or promote the text in the list.

 

This also works for tables in Word and PowerPoint.  I've found it to be invaluable when doing BA work, it's a lot easier to re-organize bullets in presentations and outline numbered lists.

 

Give it a try!

Published Thursday, April 10, 2008 8:21 AM by gstarbuck

Comments

# re: The Most Powerful Windows Keyboard Shortcut@ Thursday, April 10, 2008 11:47 AM

Wow, good find!

by Stephen

# re: The Most Powerful Windows Keyboard Shortcut@ Friday, June 27, 2008 4:53 PM

Bah, doesn't work in Notepad ;)

by CumpsD

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