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April 14, 2006
Riding the Elevator with the Scrollbar
Dear Larry,
I tend to write long documents in Word. Please tell me
there’s an easier way to get around my document than scrolling endlessly up and
down with the arrows.
P. M.
Dear P. M.,
Of course, there is. And if it’s the scrollbar arrows you’re
referring to, then you might also want a lesson on scrollbar use as well!
So let’s start there. Everybody knows how to click the up
arrow at the top of the scrollbar or the down arrow at the bottom. If you have a
little wheel on you mouse, rolling the wheel forward (up) or backward (down)
accomplishes just about the same thing and saves you the trouble of having to
aim at the scroll bar arrows.
But take a closer look at the scrollbar because it’s a lot
more than just an up and down arrow. Notice the dark and light areas in the
vertical scrollbar between the arrows. Imagine that the dark area (called the
scroll button) is an elevator in a shaft. As you scroll down, the scroll
button/elevator car moves down. Same with scrolling up. But say you want to move
the elevator car in bigger increments than just one floor at a time. Simply
click in the light area below the scroll button to jump down a screen or above
the scroll button to jump up a screen. If you’re the type who prefers to take
complete control, click on the scrollbar button itself and drag it upwards or
downwards to find the exact location you’re looking for.
Did you know you can accomplish the same thing using the
keyboard? The up arrow and down arrow on the keyboard does the same thing as
clicking the scrollbar arrows. And pressing the Page Up and Page Down keys on
the keyboard is equivalent to clicking above and below the scrollbar button.
While you’re at it, consider the other oft-forgotten shortcut
keys. The Home key on the keyboard moves the cursor to the beginning of the
current line (the line in which the cursor is blinking). Similarly, the End key
moves the cursor to the end of the current line. Add the CTRL key to the mix to
jump farther: Press Ctrl+Home (hold down the Ctrl key and tap Home) to move to
the beginning of your document and Ctrl+End to go directly to the end.
As I mentioned above, the up and down arrows move the cursor
up and down a line at a time. Ctrl+Up Arrow moves the cursor to the beginning of
the previous paragraph and Ctrl+Down Arrow jumps to the next paragraph. To get
around in shorter increments, press Right and Left Arrow to move a character at
a time and Ctrl+Right Arrow and Ctrl+Left Arrow to move a word at a time.
Lastly, in Microsoft Word specifically, you can press the F5
key to jump to just about anywhere: a particular page, line, section, or even a
bookmark you can create if you wish.
Fortunately, there are so many choices for jumping around,
you’ll never jump through hoops.
This is Larry Schneider, logging off.
