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The Miracle of Control Z


Q. Dear Tech Wizard,

 Help!  I was typing along and then all of a sudden my entire document just disappeared. I spent hours typing it and now it is gone. This isn’t the first time this has happened. Once, I lost an irreplaceable portion of a Word document that I spent hours creating and came close to throwing my computer out the window afterward.

I also remember another time when I was typing a lengthy E Mail that took me a very long time to write.  All I did was highlight some text and hit the wrong button, and my entire letter simply vanished from the screen. I would really like to avoid this nasty problem in the future.  Please advise.

Signed,

Tech Savvy Wannabe

  

A.  Dear Wannabe,

The next time this happens, stop, take a few deep breaths and discover the Secret of Control Z, also known as "Undo" (located on the edit menu).

For example, let’s say that you are typing a Word document and somehow your entire document vanishes into thin air.(I have seen cases where my clients have lost hundreds of pages of work in just a few keystrokes).

The next time this happens, STOP. If you type anything else this trick may not work. Simply hold down the CTRL button and then hit the letter Z (CTRL +Z). What you feared was lost forever will magically, instantly reappear. The computer that you love/hate will simply undo the last step that you made.

To hopefully avoid future heartache, it helps to understand exactly why this phenomenon occurs in the first place.

Here is what happens. Simply put, you probably hit the CTRL + A keys instead of the Shift + A keys as you were typing. Most likely, you wanted to type a capital A when your pinky slid down from the shift key and hit the CTRL key by mistake.  Here is the problem. CTRL + A is a shortcut that basically means highlight ALL (as in your entire document).

Now comes the disappearing act.  After hitting the CTRL + A by mistake (highlighting your entire document) the very next key you hit--any key at all--deletes everything!  This all happens very quickly and most of the time, you are not even consciously aware that your document has been highlighted until it is deleted.

Try experimenting with the CTRL + Z function on a test document with a few lines of text and discover for yourself just how it easy it is. Simply type out some text, highlight it, delete it, and then hit control Z. 

To go a little deeper into past mistakes, you can actually keep hitting the CTRL + Z repeatedly and your computer will “Undo” multiple levels. This holds true in most Microsoft programs. To avoid hitting the panic button in the future, try experimenting with a test document to get the hang of undoing consecutive levels.

Keep in mind this general fact:  Whenever text is highlighted for any reason, and you hit any key on the keyboard, your computer will delete the highlighted text, whether it is the spacebar, the Enter key or another letter.  Learning this tip will save you valuable time and energy not to mention eliminating a great deal of frustration.

Signed,
Tech Wizard

 



 

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