VISTA: Keyboard Accelerators in Folder Windows

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Some keyboard accelerators are especially useful in Explorer and folder windows. You can use these in addition to the various keys described in "Point-and-Click Operations," earlier in this chapter.

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

Hover your mouse cursor over a file or folder to see basic information about the object, such as size, date modified, and so on.

Hold the Shift key while double-clicking on a folder to open an Explorer window (with the tree view) at that location. (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 to go to the parent (containing) folder.

Hold Alt while pressing the left cursor key to navigate to the previously viewed folder. Note that this is not necessarily the parent folder, but rather the last folder opened in Explorer. You can also hold Alt while pressing the right cursor key to move in the opposite direction (i.e., forward); this is similar to the Back and Next buttons in Internet Explorer, respectively. Windows Explorer also has Back and Next buttons.

Hold the Shift key while clicking on the close button (the x in the upper-right corner of the window on the menu bar) to close all open folders that were used to get to that folder. (This, of course, makes sense only in the single-folder view and with the "Open each folder in its own window" option turned on.)

Press Ctrl-A to quickly select all contents of a folder both files and folders.

In Explorer or any single-folder window, press a letter key to quickly jump to the first file or folder starting with that letter. Continue typing to jump further. For example, pressing the N key in your \Windows folder will jump to nap. Press N again to jump to the next object that starts with N. Or, press N and then quickly press O to skip through the Ns and jump to notepad.exe. If there's enough of a delay between the N and the O keys, Explorer will forget about the N, and you'll jump to the first entry that starts with O.

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