If you’re like most people, you treat your right mouse button the way non-smokers treat the cigarette lighter in their cars. You ignore it. But like the non-smoking driver who gets a CD-player or a cellular phone and suddenly finds the lighter indispensable, once you learn how to use the right mouse button, you’ll find you can’t do without right-click either.
That right button on your mouse is not there for mere decoration. When you use it (an action called right-clicking), a menu of items will pop up telling you what actions you can perform, and shows you shortcuts you can use to breeze through everyday tasks.
While the left button is limited to selecting an item or launching an program, the right mouse button is smart enough to tell you what you need to know when. The right-click menu is context sensitive. This means that the menu of items changes depending on what you right-click and where you are when you right-click it. If you right-click the My Computer icon, for example, you’ll get different options on the right-click menu than you will if you right-click a Web page or a blank part of your desktop.
Right-click is especially handy when you come across something unfamiliar or confusing because the right-click menu will usually tell you what you can do with whatever obstacle you come across. This is why learning to right-click is a good habit to develop. Don’t worry — nothing will break. At the very worst, nothing will happen. At the best, however, you’ll find the clue you need to get beyond feeling stumped, or a shortcut that makes it easier to get the things you want to do done.
Here are some quick right-click scenarios to get you started:
You can use right-clicking in your My Documents folder to quickly copy, paste, or delete files. Most people use the menus to do this work, but with a right-click you can do the same things faster. Simply right-click a folder in your My Documents. You could delete it simply by selecting “Delete”. You could also select “Copy”, and then open a drive for your portable USB drive, and Right-click “Paste” to easily copy the files without having to drag and drop.
You can also right-click on an empty white space in your My Documents folder to arrange your files by modification date, or by size. This can help you find that file that you’ve been looking for.
On a Web page, you can use right-click to do a number of things–move forward and backward between pages you’ve browsed, print a page, or add it to your list of favorites.
Once you get into the right-click habit, you’ll settle into your favorite right-click scenarios, and you’ll find you discover new ones along the way.
