News, Tips, and Advice for Technology Professionals

Office challenge: How can you discern an icon's keyboard shortcut?

Here's the solution to last week's challenge on positioning the cursor at the beginning of a Word document. This week, we're testing your general Office expertise: How do you display an icon's keyboard shortcut?

By default, Office applications display hints, called ScreenTips, when you hover the mouse over an icon. For instance, if you hover the mouse over the Format Painter icon, the ScreenTip displays "Format Painter." Many of these icons also have shortcut keys that you can use execute the task from the keyboard. How can you display an icon's keyboard shortcut?

Last week we asked…

How do you position the cursor above a table in a Word document, when that table is the first thing in the document? Many of you responded with the answer I was looking for, but rcriswell was the first to respond: Press [Ctrl]+[Home] to position the cursor at the beginning of the table, and then press [Enter] to insert a new blank line and push the table or graphic down. A few of you knew other tricks for getting the job done:

warrior114: Press [Ctrl]+[Shift] and then press enter.
bkreamer: Select the table and then choose Split Table from the Table menu.
RayG314: Press PageUp and then press Enter. That works!
Falysi: Insert a page break.

Thanks to everyone for a great challenge!

About Susan Harkins

Susan Sales Harkins is an IT consultant, specializing in desktop solutions. Previously, she was editor in chief for The Cobb Group, the world's largest publisher of technical journals.