How to right click using the keyboard

Posted on June 7, 2008 at 5:29 am

Looking for the right click keyboard command? It’s not often you’re left without a mouse, a trackball, or a touch pad, but there are those rare occasions when nothing works! Oddly, my touch pad died the other day, I didn’t have a mouse, and my computer didn’t have a secondary mouse tracking option!

It was quite interesting to sit for hours trying to figure out what combo of keys does what! Anyway, I now have learned several useful keyboard shortcuts so that I can use my computer without the need for a mouse device!

keyboard shortcut
Image Source: Bristol

So how can you control the computer without your mouse? Well firstly, the easiest thing to do is use the ALT key and the ATL + TAB key combo. ALT + TAB lets you switch between programs and just pressing the ALT key on your keyboard focuses onto the menu options, such as File, Edit, etc.

You can then use the arrow keys to navigate the menus for a program and press Enter to “left click” on an item.

But what if you need to right-click in a Word document or right-click on a file to see it’s properties? The right-click keyboard shortcut is to hold down SHIFT and then press F10. That’s one of my favorite keyboard shortcuts because it comes in VERY handy and sometimes it’s actually easier to use the keyboard than the mouse.

There are some other handy Windows XP keyboard shortcuts that you should know in case you are stuck in a bad situation:

CTRL+ESC: Opens the Start menu (then use ARROW keys to select an item)

ALT+DOWN ARROW: Opens a drop-down list box

ALT+F4: Closes the current program window

ALT+ENTER: Open the properties for the selected object

There are of course many other shortcuts that are equally useful and I have written several posts on this earlier:

Keyboard Shortcut Secrets from MS Word

Windows Logo key shortcuts

Essential Microsoft Word shortcuts for more efficient writing

Internet Explorer 7 Shortcuts

Visually assign Windows keyboard shortcuts and hotkeys with Qliner

Hopefully, you’ll be a keyboard ninja after reading all of that! Enjoy your new keyboard knowledge!

» Filed Under Computer Tips

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Comments

19 Responses to “How to right click using the keyboard”

  1. Madhur Kapoor said on : June 7th, 2008 at 4:24 pm

    There is also a button i keyboard which does the same as right click


  2. Thomas Murphy said on : June 8th, 2008 at 5:42 am

    I love the keyboard shortcuts.


  3. Steve Yu said on : June 9th, 2008 at 5:05 am

    Shift + F10 , I’ll remember that when my mouse is not functioning.


  4. Yusuf said on : June 11th, 2008 at 2:02 am

    Very useful article. Thanks


  5. Alice said on : June 22nd, 2008 at 4:45 am

    Thnkas so much for this. The two “clickers” on my laptop seemed to have died and i can only click using the touchpad at the moment, so i couldnt right click. I was really frustrated before but this info really helped!


  6. yorick said on : July 20th, 2008 at 8:35 am

    Thanks for the shift+F10 tip. I was looking for a way to right click using the keyboard and found this page through a google search. it’s to the point and useful.
    Now I’d still really like to know if there’s a keyboard shortcut for creating a new folder (or file) in windows explorer. That would be super useful…


  7. Lakshmi Narayana said on : August 5th, 2008 at 12:53 am

    Nice website for tips and tricks


  8. missy said on : July 29th, 2009 at 4:27 am

    thank u so much this article is very useful!


  9. Camery said on : November 2nd, 2009 at 9:45 pm

    How do you copy & paste using the keyboard?


  10. Charmeur said on : November 29th, 2009 at 7:48 pm

    Thank you 100 times for Shift+F10! I have been using the Kinesis Advantage keyboard for a few weeks now, it does not have a key to activate right-click and it has been driving me mad.


  11. John Shelton said on : February 3rd, 2010 at 8:46 am

    I have been using Shift+F10 for a few years on my laptop because I have a need to assign the right button to perform a double click. During these same few years, I have been searching for a keyboard shortcut to perform a double click so I can return the right click function to default. (If laptops were built with three buttons, as all mice and trackballs currently are, this problem would not exist)


  12. Nora said on : March 4th, 2010 at 5:21 pm

    @Camery, you can copy and paste using the keyboard with CTRL + C and CTRL + V, respectively.

    As for right-clicking with the keyboard, it’s great because I rarely use my mouse at all! and it’s really great for laptops since it’s a pain to connect a mouse.


  13. Monk said on : March 8th, 2010 at 1:13 pm

    I made a bet with a friend that I could work on my computer for a whole day without touching a mouse and this tip really helps! I didn’t think about right-clicking, but you saved me!


  14. Greg said on : April 11th, 2010 at 8:34 am

    How do you use the right mouse on the keyboard?


  15. sudhakar said on : May 12th, 2010 at 9:04 am

    The Shift+F10 key shortcut is a very useful tip. I was searching for just this thing for years – but someone could not figure it out. Thanks for sharing.


  16. Sacha said on : June 12th, 2010 at 10:27 am

    Very good tip, thank you very much!


  17. Dayv said on : August 22nd, 2011 at 3:33 pm

    Sir, thank you. I’m now for 9hours without mouse and i needed to extract one rar file. With shift+F10 it was possible.


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