Everyone Loves a Shortcut!

Last month, the blog featured some great tips for using the Chrome browser. This week's post will focus on some specific tips and shortcuts you can use with Gmail and Google Docs and stems from a personal experience from last week! 

I had just finished typing a school-wide email and, as I was proofreading it, found an error I needed to fix. I have no idea what I hit, but my entire text of my email disappeared. Of course it was saving my draft as I was typing, but what was saved was now a nice, blank email. I was super frustrated and couldn't even remember exactly what I had typed to try to redo it. Unlike typing in Google Docs, there was no "undo" button in my compose email window, however, I found a keyboard shortcut to undo my last action, which brought back my email text!

Gmail:
  
We have a toolbar in our compose window that has a lot of features most people use, like changing the font or adding a bulleted list. There are additional keyboard shortcuts that can be accessed by turning them on in the settings menu.

To turn on Gmail's keyboard shortcuts in your account:

1. Click the Settings gear icon (⚙) near your Gmail's top right corner.
2. Select Settings from the menu that appears.
3. Go to the General tab.
4. Make sure Keyboard shortcuts on is selected under Keyboard shortcuts:.
5. Click Save Changes (if you did make any).

To see the entire list of shortcuts available, when you have Gmail open, hold SHIFT and press ?. 

I did find that I was able to undo my last action and recover the text I had typed in the email I referenced above by pressing CTRL and z. I did not have keyboard shortcuts enabled in my settings menu and this still worked, just FYI.

Google Docs:

There are also a lot of menu options in Google Docs. If you need to search these menus for a particular feature, you can use the ALT and z shortcut to pull up the search bar.

Here are a few commonly used shortcuts (similar to what you may have used in other word processing programs):

Copy- CTRL and c
Cut- CTRL and x
Paste- CTRL and v
Undo- CTRL and z
Print- CTRL and p

To pull up the entire list of shortcuts in Google Docs, press CTRL and /.  Note: You can also press CTRL and / while you are in Google Drive to see the full list of shortcuts that work with Google Drive!

Are there any shortcuts that you use often or would like to see? Let us know in the comments below!