11 Keyboard Shortcuts That Work On Literally Every Program

Keyboard shortcuts are not only time saving, they're also useful and can save you the trouble of clicking through menus to find and perform a really simple action. If you are going to memorize keyboard shortcuts and use them, they might as well the most popular ones.

Using Keyboard Shortcuts

• Ctrl+C to Copy
• Ctrl+X to Cut
• Ctrl+V to Paste

If there is text and/or a text field in a particular program, and you can select it, then you most definitely will be able to use the three of these shortcuts, even if there's no text, if it's an image or some other file type, as long as it's selectable within the used program, these shortcuts will help you.

• Ctrl+Z to Undo

Everyone can accidentally make a mistake while editing a file using a program, and this keyboard shortcut is what you use to go back to the previous state. You can use this shortcut multiple times and it will keep undoing actions, but they're limited. There is also a redo shortcut, but it varies from program to program.

• Ctrl+A to Select All

A very quick shortcut to select every element within a program if there is a lot of them.

• Alt+F4 to Close the Program

• Ctrl+F to Find

This shortcut works on all browser, document editors, PDF readers and more, just start typing the words you want to search for after using the shortcut, and the results will be highlighted.

• Ctrl+Tab to Switch Between Tabs

• Ctrl+Shift+Tab to Switch Between Tabs in the Other Direction

If the program contains tabs, of course, like a web browser for example.

• Ctrl+W to Close a File

This will close the file or the instance that's open within a program, but not the program itself.

• Shift+F1 for Contextual Help

Opens the documentation or the manual's page for the area focused on when the keyboard shortcut was used.