Computer Tips and Tricks, Part I

 This new series by ITS will chronicle a variety of computer tips and tricks to make your experience smoother and simpler. Part one covers miscellaneous tricks.  

If you accidentally closed a tab that you didn’t mean to, hit [Ctrl] + [Shift] + [T] to bring back the most recently closed tab. Use [Cmd] + [Shift] + [T] on Macs. 

Almost any action can be undone, from typing to moving a folder. Press [Ctrl] + [Z] to undo the most recent action. Press [Ctrl] + [Y] to redo the action. 

To easily extract images from a Word document, change the extension from .docx to .zip. When you open the file, images will be found in their own folder. 

If your computer seems to be running noticeably slow when starting up, you may have too many programs set to open with startup. This can be remedied by going to the task manager ([Ctrl] + [Shift] + [Esc]) and navigating to the startup tab in Windows. On MacOS, go to System Preferences > Users & Groups, then select your username and click on the login items tab.  

The task manager allows you to see what programs are running, and manually close any unresponsive programs. [Ctrl] + [Shift] + [Esc] will take you directly to the Task Manager pane. [Ctrl] + [Alt] + [Delete] will bring up an option for the task manager as well, but the former omits the extra step and takes you straight to the task manager pane. On Mac, use [Cmd] + [Shift] + [Esc] to open the Force Quit dialogue box, which is the MacOS equivalent. 

To take a screenshot and open it in your default editing program, hit [PrtScn] on a desktop, or [Fn] + [PrtScn] on a laptop. To take a screenshot and save it to your screenshots folder, use [PrtScn] + [Windows key] on a desktop, or [Fn] + [PrtScn] + [Windows key] on a laptop.  

Use [Alt] + [Tab] to cycle through all open windows. [Alt] + [Shift] + [Tab] will cycle through backwards. On MacOS, use [Cmd] + [Tab] instead. 

Adapted from http://www.techspot.com/guides/676-best-computer-tricks/