“You Mean Those Things on my Keyboard Have a Purpose?”

You know them. You see them every time you look down at your keyboard. You have maybe accidentally figured out what one or two of them does when overextending your reach toward the numbers. They’re function keys!

Function keys are the keys running along the top of your keyboard right after Esc and before PrtScn. On them, you’ll see the letter “F” followed by a number (1—12). I’ve been using a computer since I was about six years old and I don’t remember ever using a function key by itself. Right before I wrote this post, I thought, “Well, they must do something.” Turns out, they have a function after all.

Surprisingly, some of those little guys are actually pretty useful. (I’m looking at you, F12.) So if you’re looking for a few good old-fashioned shortcuts to make your life easer—and make you look effortlessly cool and knowledgeable in front of your co-workers— read on.

F1—Get Help

This function key creates a dialog box you can type your Word questions into.

F2—Move text or graphics

This is an alternative keystroke to cut and paste. If you have an image in your Word document that you’d like to move, click the image and press F2. At the bottom left of your screen, you’ll find the words, “Move to where?” You can use your arrow keys or your mouse to move your curser to the new location. Press Enter and settle your image into its new home.

F3—This one does not do anything in Word

You can use it in other apps (like Office) to search for files.

F4—Repeat the last action

If you’ve pressed Tab as your last keystroke, pressing F4 will tab your cursor over again. 

F5—Choose the Go To command

Instead of hunting for this choice in the Home tab, simply press F5 and go right to it. The Go To command is really useful on long documents. Instead of scrolling down 80 pages, you can skip right to page 80 with three keystrokes.

F6—Go to the next pane or frame

Pressing F6 and Enter will create a dialog pane on the left-hand side of your screen. This lets you get a bird’s eye view of your document as a whole. This one is useful for documents on the shorter side, but still longer than a few pages. Like F5, this one will save your scrolling finger from carpal tunnel. If you can get carpal tunnel in one finger.

F7—Choose the Spelling command

Skip clicking over to the Review tab and clicking on the Spelling command manually. Open the Spelling panel (on the right-hand side of your screen) with one click.

F8—Extend a selection

Put your cursor before the section you want to single out (whether to cut, copy, highlight, etc.). Press F8. Place your cursor at the end of the section you want to select. Now that entire section is highlighted. This is useful for copying large bodies of text. Especially if you’re using a laptop. Maybe it’s just me, but for some reason highlighting a lot of text on a touchpad is highly frustrating.

F9—Update the selected fields

I’ll be honest, I don’t think this one does anything. According to Computer Hope, it will refresh your document. I don’t know what that means and I can’t see that it does anything for me. So, congrats if you know what this one does. You’re more computer literate than I am. As for me, I’ll go ahead and skip this one in the future.

F10 – Show KeyTips

This activates the Menu bar. If your mouse isn’t working for some reason and you really need to do something in Word, this allows you to navigate with only your keyboard.

F11—Go to the next field

Another one that does not do anything in Word.  It will help you enter and exit full screen mode with your internet browser, though, so that’s pretty cool.

F12—Choose the Save As command

Cut a couple steps out of your process and jump straight to Save As with F12. I will use this one all the time.

Now, go forth and be efficient.