Page 109 - Windows 10 May 2019 Update The Missing Manual: The Book That Should Have Been in the Box

POWER USERS’ CLINIC THE MASTER FILE
EXPLORER KEYBOARD-SHORTCUT LIST

If you arrive home one day to discover that your mouse has
been stolen, or if you simply like using the keyboard, you’ll
enjoy the shortcuts that work in File Explorer:

F6 or Tab cycles the “focus” (highlighting) among the
different parts of the window: Favorite Links, address bar,
main window, search box, and so on.

Shift+Ctrl+N makes a new empty folder.

F4 highlights the address bar and pops open the list of previous
addresses. (Press Alt+D to highlight the address bar without
opening the pop-up menu.)

Alt+ opens the previously viewed window, as though you’d
clicked the Back button in a browser. Once you’ve used Alt+
, you can press Alt+ to move forward through your recently

open windows.

Backspace does the same thing as Alt+ . It, too, walks you
backward through the most recent windows you’ve had open.

That’s a change from Windows XP, when Backspace meant
“up,” as in, “Take me to the parent folder” (see Alt+ , next).

Alt+ opens the parent window of whatever you’re looking at
now—just like the button next to the address bar.

Alt+double-clicking an icon opens the Properties window for

that icon. (It shows the same sort of information you’d find in
the Details pane.) Or, if the icon is already highlighted, press
Alt+Enter.

Alt+P hides or shows the Preview pane.

F11 enters or exits full-screen mode, in which the current
window fills the entire screen. Even the taskbar and Ribbon are