5 Very Useful, Productive Windows 7 Tricks You Must Use

Here are some of the windows 7 tricks which I use frequently. Check them out as they might speed up things for you a bit.

Useful Windows 7 Productivity Tips

1. Save Images, Copy Files to the Desktop Quickly

Click hold the item, like an image on a webpage and drag and drop it into the Show Desktop button in the right-down corner of the screen, it instantly shows the desktop. Release the mouse hold and the item will be saved, copied to your desktop. You can use this copy any file to desktop.

2. Extended Options in "Send To" in Right Click Menu

Hold down [Shift] key and then right-click on any file etc to get more advanced version of Send To with extra send to locations. Very useful to send files to your Library folders etc. I also use FileMenuTools for some super advanced right click menu for managing files etc.

3. Run Start Menu Programs as with Administrator Privileges Directly

Instead of using the Right Click > Run as administrator option, you can press hold [Ctrl][Shift] and then click on the program to directly run it as administrator. In case if you don’t know, some programs don’t work properly if you don’t run them with admin privileges like netbeans, cmd etc.

4. Search Tips in Windows 7 Explorer

Use the asterisk (*) as wildcard : For eg: To search for all files with the extension .doc type *. doc

Search by Size : Type size: and it will show you options to search by size (see above). Simple select a range and then add your keywords.

Search by Type : Type type:image or type:doc or type:video along with keywords to specify you search for file type.

Here is a list of search codes finding files using Windows 7 search.

5. Drag and Drop Files from your Jumplist into Gmail as Attachment

Jumplists are your most recently used files etc by an application. Right Click on a Taskbar launch icon to show the jumplist.

Now gmail has this useful feature that lets you drag drop files into the browser while composing to automatically add it as attachment to that email message (see details).

So you can drag drop files from jumplists for eg: right click on the word icon drag drop the file into gmail compose window to add it as attachment. There are other site which let you to upload files via drag drop and you can use this technique for them too.

Note: To add any program like Word to taskbar right click on the program in start menu and select "Pin to Taskbar".

Bonus Tip: Record a PC Problem Step by Step with Problem Steps Recorder

Windows 7 comes with the awesome Problem Steps Recorder to automatically capture the steps you take on a computer, including a text description of where you clicked and a picture of the screen during each click (called a screen shot).