When it comes to optimizing your workflow or enhancing performance, Windows applications offer an array of powerful, yet often overlooked, features. While we all know the standard shortcuts and settings, there’s a treasure trove of lesser-known tips and tricks that can help you get more out of your Windows experience. Whether you’re looking to speed up your PC, streamline tasks in Microsoft Word and Excel, or harness the power of advanced find-and-replace options, these insights can make a noticeable difference.
In this article, we’ll dive into three under-the-radar tips that will empower you to boost your system’s performance, take full control of clipboard history in Office apps, and master the use of wildcards in Microsoft Word. These easy-to-follow tricks are perfect for anyone from casual users to seasoned professionals looking to make their computing more efficient and effective.
Here are three lesser-known tips and tricks for Your Windows and Microsoft Office applications:
Give Your Windows PC a little Speed Boost by Following This Tip
- Click regedit in your Windows’ Search bar and then click Run as Administrator option from the right pane of the windows just popped over.
- Click Yes button in response to the dialog that just opens and says “Do you want to allow this app to make changes to your device?”.
- It will launch the famous old Windows Registry Editor.
- From the Registry key hives on the left panel, locate and click
Computer -> HKEY_CURRENT_USER -> Control Panel -> Desktop - Locate and double click MenuShowDelay key
- Replace value data from 400 to 10
It will substantially speed up your Windows navigation by reducing the menu delay time.
Another quick trick
- Click
to launch Run command window. - Type in msconfig and click Ok
- In System Configuration Window, under Boot tab make sure your current OS is selected. Suppose it says Windows 10… Keep it selected and click Advanced options button.
- Under Number of processors in BOOT Advanced Options window open the drop-down below Number of processors check box and select the maximum number available so that your Windows OS will select all processors. You may be required to restart your system.
Yet another trick
- Click to launch Run command window.
- Type in systempropertiesperformance in the command window, no space in-between.
- Click Ok
- Performance Options windows will be popped up.
- Click Adjust for best performance radio option. You’ll see all appearance option check boxes are unchecked. Though you can still check the desired ones but please turn on only a few so that they may not compromise the system performance.
- Click Apply then click OK
The above tricks won’t run your system at a rocket speed but you’ll still observe a substantial performance boost.
Quick Access to Clipboard History in Microsoft Word and Excel
Microsoft Office applications like Word and Excel have a built-in Clipboard manager that can store up to 24 items. This allows you to copy multiple pieces of text or data and paste them in any order.
- Press Ctrl + C to copy the items as usual.
- Open the Clipboard pane: Word/Excel/PowerPoint: Go to the Home tab, and in the Clipboard group, click the small diagonal arrow in the bottom-right corner to open
the Clipboard pane. In the Clipboard pane, you can see up to 24 copied items. Click on any item to paste it into your document. As you may see, these items could be anything; a simple text, a formatted text (like from MS Word, Excel or HTML) or an image. - Yet, there’s a direct method you’ll love to know. Press
key combination and voila! Your system’s clipboard will get open for you along the bottom edge.
This feature is quite handy while working with multiple pieces of content at once, especially in complex documents or spreadsheets. You can copy/paste data from any format to its respective application provided that it still exists in the clipboard pane.
Use Wildcards in MS Word’s Find and Replace
Microsoft Word’s Find and Replace feature supports the use of wildcards, allowing you to perform advanced searches and replace complex patterns of text.
- Press Ctrl + H to launch the Find and Replace dialog.
- Click on More to expand the options.
- Check the box that labels Use wildcards.
You can now use special characters like ‘*’ (to match any number of characters) or ‘?’ (to match a single character), and many more options. You can even use regular expression to some extent, for complex pattern search. Here are some examples for you:
Find All Capitalized Words
If you want to find every word that starts with a capital letter:
Find what: <[A-Z][a-z]{1,}>
Replace with: any replacement text.
Here ‘<‘ specifies the start of a word, ‘[A-Z]’ finds any uppercase letter, and ‘[a-z]{1,}’ matches the lowercase letters following the uppercase letter.
Find Nothing but Number(s)
<[0-9]{1,}>
Find words that contain only alphabets
<[A-Za-z]{1,}>
Find All Lines Starting with a Specific Word
To find all lines that start with a specific word (e.g., “Chapter”):
(^13Chapter*)
