Sometimes my coworkers will watch me write, because they like a freak show. I guess they’ve never seen someone who uses the mouse as little as I do. If I know a keyboard shortcut, I use it. It’s faster, I say, and they agree I have a point.
This morning I found a tool called Keyrocket, via the Raymond.cc blog, for learning Windows and Office keyboard shortcuts. Think of it as a helpful, non-annoying, non-evil Office Assistant.
The program watches you work, and if a keyboard shortcut exists for something you do repeatedly, it tells you about it.
My biggest complaint about the Office ribbon is that there’s no longer any way for Office to indicate keyboard shortcuts to you. Prior to Office 2007, the shortcuts were right there in the menu. I’m still not an expert at using ribbon-based programs, even though I’ve been using them for five years now.
Keyrocket provides one approach to solving that problem. It would be nice if Microsoft would build Keyrocket-like functionality into its software. That would be one way to get me to move past Office 2003 at home.
David Farquhar is a computer security professional, entrepreneur, and author. He has written professionally about computers since 1991, so he was writing about retro computers when they were still new. He has been working in IT professionally since 1994 and has specialized in vulnerability management since 2013. He holds Security+ and CISSP certifications. Today he blogs five times a week, mostly about retro computers and retro gaming covering the time period from 1975 to 2000.