I was at a local Microsoft partner's office into the wee hours of Friday morning. They had a server blowup and were in their second day/night of getting it back up and running. They invited me up to the office to hang out, keep them company (and awake!), and potentially offer some assistance if they came across a problem. As it happens when geeks get together, some techie discussions ensued. One of them actually mentioned my last blog post about "things I take for granted." He asked me if I knew about "F2." I know F1 is help. And I know that Alt-F4 will close down a program. F5 is refresh, but I couldn't think of a use for F2. He smiled, knowing full well that he was about to teach me something and teach he did. Clicking on something (a file or folder in Windows Explorer, a cell in Excel, etc.) and clicking F2 automatically drops you into edit/rename mode. In Windows Explorer, in order to rename a file, you would need to right click, select rename, then type the new name. Or, you could just use F2. In Excel, double clicking is probably easier than hitting F2, but now you know it is an option.
And today's a two-fer. (It is sponsored by the number 2.) I tested this out by opening My Computer and clicking on one of my hard drive icons (I have several external drives connected to my home machine) and hitting F2. Why would I do that? Here's one from me -- you can change the name of your drives from "local disk" to something more meaningful. This is especially nice if you have multiple external drives. Simply click on the drive icon in My Computer and hit F2. This highlights the name of the drive ("local disk" by default in Windows Vista) and allows you to change it. I, for instance, have a drive that looks like a giant blue Lego block named "BlueLego." This way, I know where my data is going when I save it. These names persist after being disconnected, too.
This is much easier than trying to decipher which external drive is H and which is T. It also makes things easier when you actually need to take one of your portable drives with you -- you'll know exactly which one has your data on it!
1 comments:
Good to know, I did know the last one and use it a LOT (I send a lot of email to the wrong people), but this one was new. I despise using the mouse more than I need to, so this should help when I'm cleaning up files.
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