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Patrick Chinn
Distributed Network Computing Consultant
pchinn@uoregon.edu
But what happens when you have ten, 20, or 315 items to open, move, or delete? Trashing dozens of items one at a time is a recipe for exhaustion!
The solution is to use selection modifier keys. By pressing specific keys on the keyboard, we can tell the computer to do something different when we make our selection. These keys are called selection modifier keys.
Returning to our email example, let's say my business manager accidentally sends me 25 copies of the same budget spreadsheet via email. Of course I could delete the 24 unwanted messages individually by selecting each message and clicking the delete button. (That adds up to 48 total clicks!) But if I use a modifier key, I can delete those 24 messages with only three clicks (assuming the duplicate messages arrived all at once).
How do I do this? The secret is to use the SHIFT key. To delete a contiguous (neighboring or adjoining) set of messages, click on the first message in the set, hold down the SHIFT key, and click on the last message in the set. All 24 messages are then selected. To finish the operation, click the delete button, deleting all 24 messages at once.
Sometimes I receive lots of unwanted email, and those messages are scattered throughout my inbox. I could select a message and click "delete" for each item, but there's a faster way. To select noncontiguous items, I can hold down the COMMAND key (Mac OS) or CTRL key (Windows) and click to select each item. Now that I have selected all the junk messages in my mailbox, I need to click the delete button only once.
These modifier keys are useful in any program, such as email and Microsoft Excel, that presents information in the form of a list or table. But modifier keys can also be useful when working with items that are presented as icons or pictures. For instance, to select a set of files within a folder, click and drag to select files within the rectangular area. If you need to add a few more files to that selection, don't forget the COMMAND (or CTRL) key; hold the key and click on each file to add it to your selection.
Most programs that present data in the form of a list will support selection modifier keys. Web pages are often an exception to this rule, most notably webmail interfaces. Yahoo, Gmail, and the UO's own webmail interfaces all require the user to click innumerable check boxes to delete email en masse.
Both Mac OS and Windows offer another selection-related shortcut: select all. To select all in Mac OS, press COMMAND+A; in Windows press CTRL+A. Select all will then select every item in the list, window, or page, depending on what program you are using.
In this article, I have focused solely on keyboard shortcuts that are related to selecting files or items. These shortcuts represent only a fraction of available keyboard controls.
For a complete list of Mac OS X keyboard shortcuts, see http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=75459
For a list of Windows XP keyboard shortcuts, see http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;Q301583