| Certain keyboard shortcuts can be real time savers in Explorer, especially when used in conjunction with the mouse. The following tips assume you're using standard double-clicking, the default in Windows XP. If you've chosen to have icons respond to a single click (by going to Control Panel  Folder Options General tab), just replace "double-click" here with " single-click ." -
Hold the Alt key while double-clicking on a file or folder to view the Properties sheet for that object. Although this is often quicker than right-clicking and selecting Properties, the right-click menu ” also known as the context menu ” has a bunch of other options, most of which are not accessible with keystrokes. For more information on context menus and file types, see the discussion of Explorer in Chapter 3. -
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 file first. -
Press Backspace in an open folder window or in Explorer to go to the parent folder. -
Hold Alt while pressing the left arrow (cursor) key to navigate to the previously viewed folder. Note that this is not necessarily the parent folder, but rather the last folder in Explorer's history. Once you've returned to a previously viewed folder, you can also hold Alt while pressing the right arrow key to move in the opposite direction (i.e., forward). Explorer's toolbar also has Back and Next buttons by default, which work just like their counterparts in Internet Explorer. -
With the focus on Explorer's folder tree, use the left and right arrow keys to collapse and expand folders, respectively. Press the asterisk (*) key to expand all the sub-folders of the currently selected branch. -
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 on another icon in the same folder to select it and all the items in between. -
Hold the Ctrl key 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. NOTE You can select mulutiple files without using the keyboard by dragging a rubber band around them. Start by holding down the left mouse button in a blank portion of a folder window, then drag the mouse to the opposite corner to select everything that appears in the rectangle you just drew. -
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 several files in a folder, you can hold Ctrl while clicking or dragging a second rubber band to invert selections (highlighting additional files or deselecting already-highlighed files) without losing your original selection. -
Press Ctrl-A to quickly select all 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 subfolder. 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 there'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.  |
