Ctrl-Z – The Superman of all keyboard shortcuts.

Ok folks, hopefully this will be one many people will know about.

But if you don’t, oh if you don’t, are you going to feel pleased you stopped by. Your life changes forever right here.

Because in life there are certain events which shape us. Our formative years in school, our first love, our first heartbreak, our economy going down the tubes, that sort of thing.

But when it comes to computers, this is the biggie.

I remember when I found out about Ctrl-Z, it was like losing my computer virginity, choirs of Seraphim started singing the Hallalujah Chorus in my head. If I smoked, I’d have lit one up and spooned the keyboard.

And now my friend, this too shall be your epiphany.

Ok, are you ready, I’ll shall reveal what it actually does.

If you press the Ctrl key (bottom left) and the Z key TOGETHER (it’s cmd-Z on the Mac) you will go back a step, you will undo your last keyboard action, that thing you just did on your computer that you didn’t mean to, never happened!

And if you press them again, guess what, you go back another step, and then another, and then another.

(Oh, and don’t worry if you Ctrl-Z’ed past the point you meant to stop. Now just press Ctrl-Y and you’ll restore that last errant Ctrl-Z step, and then another, and then another…)

Bloody hell, that’s brilliant, and so simple!

Yes it is, because bombastic exaggerations aside it’s probably the most basic but most useful thing anybody ever learns about using a computer.

I’ve been in offices before where a whole section of staff didn’t know about Ctrl-Z.

Ok, it was the men who didn’t know.

But when I’ve explained its powerful beauty, above the excited exclamations of “Holy Sh*t, I didn’t know that”, I’ve heard the Angelic Host singing in their head as well.

At which point I quietly moved myself and my keyboard out of the way.

So now when you’ve just made a mistake in an email, copying and pasting in Word, entering data in Excel or writing a sentence in a blog and then thinking nah, that’s rubbish, you too can be like Superman in the first movie and reverse time.

Hitting Ctrl-Z won’t defeat an evil mastermind but believe me, it will save you from yourself.

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