I’ve written about my tip of the week microlearning adventure before and it had quite a good run. Ultimately situations and priorities conspired to end it after over 400 consecutive weeks. (You can see most of them here.)

Every tip in that collection is aimed to help show people how to work smarter instead of harder. While I may have stopped publishing those tips, I don’t think I’ll ever stop looking for better, more efficient ways of getting things done. Recently, I went over there looking for one of them to refresh my memory and realized that they’ve stood the test of time.

Since many of them are still relevant and I’ve never stopped looking for new ones. I’ve decided to bring them back for a #TechTuesday post. I’m thinking of posting a mix of the better old ones mixed with a healthy dose of new ones. Just like that first iteration, I have no idea how or where it will go but also just like that one I’m gonna give it a go and see what happens.

My hope is that from time to time you’ll be able to learn something new from these that will help save you some time or maybe allow you to do some things a little bit better.

Use PowerPoint in Full-Screen Mode

Even when I’m working at my desk with 3 monitors, I still find times when I want more room to work. Fortunately, in PowerPoint, there’s a super, handy keyboard shortcut that gives you some extra workspace by toggling off all your toolbars and the ribbon. (If you ever use F11 to make your browser full screen, you’re already familiar with this idea.)

This shortcut is also great if you just want to focus on your slide content with all the “extra junk” hidden away.

Press CTRL+SHIFT+ F1 all at the same time and voila! All the toolbars, etc disappear and your workspace expands.

Whenever you want everything back to normal, just hit CTRL+SHIFT+F1 again and you’re right back to the usual Normal View. I guess that is the normal Normal view, huh?

If you like this in PowerPoint you can also try it out in your Word documents and Excel spreadsheets.

What’s your favorite keyboard shortcut?