Windows XP Pocket Reference

Helpful Explorer Keystrokes

Certain keyboard shortcuts can be real time savers in Explorer, especially when used in conjunction with the mouse. The following tips assume you're using standard double-clicking, the default in Windows XP. If you've chosen to have icons respond to a single click (by going to Control Panel → Folder Options → General tab), just replace "double-click" here with "single-click."

• Hold the Alt key while double-clicking on a file or folder to view the Properties sheet for that object.

  Although this is often quicker than right-clicking and selecting Properties, the right-click menu — also known as the context menu — has a bunch of other options, most of which are not accessible with keystrokes. For more information on context menus and file types, see the discussion of Explorer in Chapter 3.

• Hold the Shift key while double-clicking a folder icon to open an Explorer window at that location (as opposed to a single-folder window). Be careful when using this, because Shift is also used to select multiple files. The best way is to select the file first.

• Press Backspace in an open folder window or in Explorer to go to the parent folder.

• Hold Alt while pressing the left arrow (cursor) key to navigate to the previously viewed folder. Note that this is not necessarily the parent folder, but rather the last folder in Explorer's history. Once you've returned to a previously viewed folder, you can also hold Alt while pressing the right arrow key to move in the opposite ...