The MicroTrain Blog

Each time I do a class in Microsoft Office, students ask, why remember or use keyboard shortcuts where in fact it is easier to use the mouse, click the command you want, it does it. I agree with that.

But, remember, many years back, there is no mouse, it’s only keyboard. Do you wonder why if at times your mouse goes goofy then you call up MIS, tech support, whatever you call them at work, they don’t prioritize you. They won’t, we won’t! You know why?

Because we know, you can manage using your keyboard. Keep in mind as a technical support guy; we receive calls for troubleshooting simple to complex ones the whole day. Whenever your problem is doable in other ways, we won’t hear you. We will deal with someone having virus problem or not able to send file needed by the boss. Your problem is less important to us though we will definitely get back to you once we find the time.

Therefore, knowing the keyboard shortcuts are very important especially in a Microsoft Office product like Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Access to name a few. Knowing a few combinations mean you can work with all of the products in the suite. So why not become a master of keyboard shortcuts.
Let’s try some of the most popular ones.

CTRL + A>> it selects all, everything you’ve got in your document. It doesn’t matter if text, image or both.

CTRL + C >> it copies whatever you highlighted or selected and waiting for you to paste it somewhere.

CTRL + X>> it cuts whatever you highlighted or selected and waiting for you to paste it in a new spot.

CTRL + V>> it allows you to paste the copied or cut items you have selected or highlighted.

CTRL + Z>> it does the undo of previous action. You can do this many times to undo previous actions in sequence.

CTRL + Y>> it does the redo of previous action. Same as undo, you can do this many times and it repeats actions you’ve done previously in sequence.

In PowerPoint where most of the items are in bullets or numbers, we can use the TAB key to indent the selected item. But how do you outdent using keyboard shortcut? You do SHIFT + TAB. Try it, it’s cool! It also works with SMART ART bullets and numbers. TAB means demote the level, SHIFT + TAB means promote it. Amazing huh!

How about exiting your Office Application without the use of the mouse? How do you do that? This one is not a giveaway. Try to right mouse click on an open application at the task bar. Your task bar is where you START button is located. Whenever you do this, you have a pad of commands in the list and one in there is CLOSE which also the same as exit or close your current file. You will see across the word “CLOSE” a keyboard shortcut combination. Try that combination and see whether it does it, or closes down your application.

Bottom line, keyboard shortcuts are very powerful, the same way with how much you love and think mouse clicking is. In the end, what’s important is able to survive if the mouse goes wacky and no replacement is available or no tech guy at hand to assist you. It may mean going back a few hours in Flintstone’s age but eventually, it’s an added learning to be back in the Jetson’s era, right?

For the keyboard shortcuts complete list, please go to http://office.microsoft.com and in the search box, type keyboard shortcuts, you can even do this for each Office product, just find it from the left menu of that website.

Goodluck exploring it. Have fun!

How important is virtualization? I read an article by Gartner Group telling us that virtualization will rule the I.T. world as early as 2010. It looks like it’s already here but are we using it? How do we benefit from it then?

Virtualization means software implementation of different services in one single physical box. It just means, IT departments need not invest anymore on several physical servers just to address different services.

Long time ago when I was still working in the MIS department of a bank, data is too critical that we have to plan well. Additionally speed is important for bank branches to make a request for certain data at their end. We’ve been talking about heavily of client/server setup then followed with the idea of business logic in the middle to handle requests before it goes to the back end servers to offload it from heavy failing requests.

Technology infrastructure has evolved so fast that these days the “in” thing is to go for virtualization. Whenever you hear someone from your tech group discussing about virtual machines then your company may have started with it already.

Windows 7 is ready for virtualization. It’s already built in. Other operating systems can accommodate installation and setup of client based virtualization like the free Virtual PC and the not so free VMWare. So what is exactly virtualization?

Virtualization will save a company lots of $$$ amount. Any services that are related can be hosted in one box; virtualization is possible as opposed to lots of physical servers to host each of these services. Long time ago, a computer serving as a print server, file server, at the same time a client computer will definitely crawl for it is handling all these services. The ideal setup as always is to have one physical server for one service.  Costly since we’re talking of three dedicated computers to provide the abovementioned. This scenario connotes the idea of N-tier setup where N could mean numerous or infinite number of machines to address the services need to be in placed in the company’s network.

These days, this is not the ideal setup anymore. Let’s go green by doing virtualization. With company’s trying to cut on electric bills, virtualization will definitely be the key thru consolidation of various services into a single server. Gartner says in many cases, a virtual machine running means one less physical machine in operation. Cool huh?!?!

Concern by many now is, are we saying HP, Dell and other known computer vendors will lose market for physical servers? Not really for as long as these IT vendor giants will start building heavy duty boxes to handle the load then they can still make money. So it’s a win-win scenario if in case.

For those who want to practice on virtualization, try to download the Virtual PC 2004 or 2007 from the Microsoft website, it’s free. The only thing that is not free of course are the software and operating system that will run inside that virtual machine box. If you just want to try it, trial versions of software you can get will also work in it.

Any questions on your virtual machine setup, e-mail me at cramirez@microtrain.net.