Recover instantly from PC mistakes

Most PC mistakes are easy to undo if you know how. Edward Munn reveals quick, reliable fixes for six of the most common blunders.

- Edward Munn

Instantly undo your last mistake 

Ctrl+Z is one of the most useful keyboard shortcuts you can ever learn. In Microsoft Office programs, such as Word and Excel, it can be used not only to quickly undo your last mistake but also to jump back an almost unlimited number of steps to restore anything you’ve recently edited. In fact, when you make a change anywhere in Windows, such as renaming or deleting a file, pressing Ctrl+Z is normally the quickest way of restoring it to its previous state.

This life-saving keyboard shortcut isn’t exclusive to Microsoft tools and should always be the first thing you try when you make any mistake that you’re desperate to undo. In most cases, Ctrl+Y performs the reverse action, letting you redo steps that you’ve just undone. Beware of being too enthusiastic with Ctrl+Z, though, because not all programs offer the redo function, so you could end up inadvertently deleting your work!

Reopen accidentally closed tabs

When you close lots of browser tabs at once, it’s easy to shut one down by mistake. There are a couple of ways you can restore tabs you’ve accidently closed in both Google Chrome and Firefox, the quickest of which is to simply press Ctrl+Shift+T. This keyboard shortcut isn’t limited to only reopening the last tab you shut, so you can keep pressing it to restore each successive closed page.

If you’ve shut a lot of tabs and only want to open one specific web page, open your browser’s main menu and click History to display a summary of recently closed web pages. Simply click the one you want to reopen.

You can find your recently closed tabs in Firefox by selecting History from the main menu. There’s also an option to Restore Closed Tabs, which retrieves all your recently closed tabs in one click.