The computer mouse is an incredibly nifty device, which unfortunately, a lot of people do not use to its full potential. There are many more things the mouse can do than left-click to move and select things or right-click to bring up context menus. Many of the tricks are easy to learn as they depend on no more than three keyboard keys. However, they can turn out to be huge time savers and making some tasks much easier.

I have to admit up front that the title of this article is not entirely accurate. As you will see, the list below has a dozen items, not just three. Well, my logic is that if you are slightly geeky and know your way around with computers, you have probably heard of a few of these tricks or maybe even most of them. However, I’m sure that the average person will find at least three Windows mouse tricks they have never heard of before. I have included some simple tricks to offer a somewhat complete list for those who are not as experienced.

Left Mouse Button Tricks

You hopefully know that you can use the [SHIFT] key to select multiple items in a folder. Now, you can do the same for text on a website or in a document. Just click the start point of the paragraph you want to select, then hold the [SHIFT] key, while you click at the end point of what you want to select. Et voilà, that whole chunk of text has been highlighted and can now be copied or edited.

• To select text, left-click first character, then hold [SHIFT] key and select last character.

If you are a little more advanced, you probably know that you can also select a random series of items in a folder by holding down the [CTRL] key as you select the items. Again, the same can be done when you want to select multiple random chunks of text in a document. Just hold onto the [CTRL] key as you go and highlight whatever you want to select. This will not work everywhere, but it does work very nicely in Office documents.