Advanced Tips - For Basic Tasks

No matter how often you do something on your PC, there will always be ways you can do it faster and better. Daniel Booth explains how to improve the everyday tasks that we do almost without thinking.

Copy and paste

Just as the first words children learn are usually ‘mummy’ and ‘daddy’, so the first keyboard shortcuts PC users learn are typically Ctrl+X/C/V, letting you cut, copy and paste. It’s such a simple command that you may think there’s not much else it can do, but there are hidden settings that unlock useful tools. For example, you can set the Office Clipboard (the one you use in Word and Excel) to open automatically when you copy more than one item. The Clipboard appears on the left-hand side, listing the items you’ve copied.

To enable this setting, in the Home tab click the tiny arrow to the bottom-right of Clipboard, then click Options at the bottom. Next, tick the Show Office Clipboard Automatically box.

Printing

The Word equivalent of invisible ink is the Hidden Text option. This conceals text in a document, which is useful if you need to print two versions – one showing the hidden text, one without. Highlight then right-click the text you want to hide, then click Font. In the Effects box, tick Hidden, then OK at the bottom.

If you find that the hidden text is still printed, you may need to untick a printing setting. In a Word document press Ctrl+P, then Options at the bottom left. Under the ‘Printing options’ heading make sure ‘Print hidden text’ is unticked.

Deleting files