How To Streamline Your Mouse Use

Back in the first days of the computer, the only way to interface with a terminal was through a keyboard, no mouse. Of course, back then, most operating systems ran on a command line interface so a mouse wasn’t really necessary. But nowadays, when we have mice available, a question is raised – are you using your mouse productively?

The mouse gives us a great deal of control in two dimensions – selecting, dragging, tapping, double-tapping, and more. However, what if you could improve your Windows mouse usage efficiency by a significant factor? If you streamline mouse control into as few actions as possible, you can really ramp up your productivity. Here’s how.

Note: Everything in this article has been tested and confirmed for Windows 7. These may or may not work in prior or future versions (e.g., XP and 8).

Streamline Mouse Shortcuts

If you’ve ever used a Windows computer, you likely know what the left and right mouse buttons do: the left click is a selection tool that allows you to drag items around while the right click opens up a context menu for more advanced actions. But did you know that Windows comes equipped with a number of other useful mouse shortcuts?

• Ctrl + Left Click. If left clicking lets you select an item, then holding down Ctrl lets you select multiple items one at a time. This is extremely useful when you need to cut or copy a specific group of files but they’re scattered around in a huge folder of documents.
• Shift + Left Click. If Ctrl lets you select multiple files one at a time, then Shift lets you select multiple consecutive files all at once. Basically, you left click on one file, then Shift + left click on another file, and every file between those two files will be selected as a group.
• Shift + Left Click, again. The great thing about Shift clicking is that it works for text, too. Whether you’re in Firefox, Chrome, Microsoft Word, or wherever else, if you click somewhere and then Shift + click elsewhere, all of the text between those two points will be highlighted.
• Ctrl + Drag. When you have a file (or multiple files) selected, you can hold Ctrl while dragging them and Windows will copy those files to the new destination.
• Shift + Drag. When you have a file (or multiple files) selected, you can hold Ctrl while dragging them and Windows will move those files to the new destination, i.e., cut and paste.
• Ctrl + Scrollwheel. If your mouse has a scrollwheel, then you probably only use it to scroll through folders and webpages. If you hold down Ctrl while scrolling, though, you’ll zoom in and out. This is great for webpages that are hard to read (the text will become bigger). In Windows Explorer, the icons will become bigger.