Pogue's Basics: Operate the Windows Ribbon from the keyboard

The Windows 10 Ribbon is supposed to enhance your efficiency by putting every conceivable command in one place, with nothing hidden. But how efficient is a tool that requires mousing?

Fortunately, the Ribbon is fully keyboard-operable. It even has a built-in cheat sheet. To see it, press the Alt key. You see little boxed letter-key shortcuts for each of the tabs. (Those keystrokes work even if you haven’t first summoned the cheat sheet.)

Sometimes, you’ll actually see two-letter codes, to be typed one letter a time. In a Pictures library, for example, the Picture Tools tab of the Ribbon offers “JP” as the keyboard shortcut to get you to the Manage tab. But the idea is the same: to save you time and mousing.

Adapted from “Pogue’s Basics: Tech” (Flatiron Press), by David Pogue.

David Pogue, tech columnist for Yahoo Finance, welcomes nontoxic comments in the comments section below. On the web, he’s davidpogue.com. On Twitter, he’s @pogue. On email, he’s poguester@yahoo.com. You can read all his articles here, or you can sign up to get his columns by email.

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