Most keyboards have a good number of keys that hardly anyone usesmany of them made more sense in other times when we did not use the mouse so much, but that does not mean that they have lost their usefulness.
On the contrary, many keys that we leave gathering dust can be even more useful than the keyboard shortcuts that we are used to and constantly depend on. A couple that are probably unknown to no one are the famous CTLR + C and CTRL + V to copy and paste. But, they are not the only ones who serve for it.
The Ins key, famous has little
For those used to dealing with word processors, perhaps the key Insert
or Ins
not so unknown to them, after all one of its most common uses is to change the text input mode.
When we press the key in a text box, the mode changes between what is known as “overtype” (the text at the cursor location is overwritten) or “insert” (a character is inserted at the cursor position by moving all one position later). This is something that some of us discover rather by accident using Word when we are 8 years old.
However, the Ins key has more functions in Windows, one of them is to be combined with Control or Shift to copy and paste. In this system, CTRL + INS is the equivalent of CTRL + C, while SHIFT + INS is equivalent to CTRL + V.
The best of all this is that when CTLR + V fails, SHIFT + INS almost certainly works. If the shortcut stops working for some reason, or the app you’re trying to copy something into doesn’t respond to the usual shortcut, there’s a good chance it will respond to the Ins key. It’s a matter of trying, it’s a very simple “trick”, but it’s never too much to know.