Drop down menus and menu bars in Microsoft Office tools make working with your files easier, but opening menus and hunting through tool bars can get frustrating. Learn how to perform simple tasks like undoing mistakes, adding bold and italix to text and deleting whole words at a time with a single key combo.

1. Ctrl+Z is the magic undo combo. It simply undoes your last action, say, the paragraph you accidentally erased (it works in other applications, too--try it on the Photoshop filter you really wish you hadn't applied, or after renaming a document or a folder in a Windows directory). Programs vary in the number of times you can undo something, but some will let you Ctrl+Z all the way back to the beginning. (And, yes, there is a redo command, just hit Ctrl+Y.)

2. Ctrl+B, Ctrl+I, or Ctrl+U apply bold, italics, or underline to highlighted text, respectively.

3. Ctrl+P prints whatever is in an active window.

4. Ctrl+Backspace erases an entire word at a time, instead of a letter. Ctrl+up or down arrows let you scroll an entire paragraph at a time, instead of one line, and Ctrl+Shift+up or down arrow will select an entire paragraph.

5. Ctrl+Enter inserts a page break in Word.

6. Alt+Ctrl+C inserts the copyright symbol (Alt+Ctrl+R inserts the registered trademark symbol, and Alt+Ctrl+T makes the trademark symbol).

7. In Outlook, you can jump to the section you want: Ctrl+1 switches to the Mail window, Ctrl+2 switches to the Calender, Ctrl+3 to Contacts, Ctrl+4 to Tasks, and Ctrl+5 to Notes.

9. In Outlook e-mail, hit Ctrl+N to compose a new message, Ctrl+R to reply to a message.

10. The only Excel shortcut I've ever known, Ctrl+, enters the date.