I’m trying to do a better job of identifying and documenting little shortcut keys and tricks that I use on my different computers/OSes/applications. I’m trying to build a ‘tip of the week’ library of stuff like this to share with the community. Those of us that really grok computers don’t always realize what we know, and what’s intuitive for us isn’t always so for others (especially depending on the application.) Plus, if you’ve been doing it that way for years, you don’t realize other people do it other ways… until you stand behind them and watch them do it the long way.

For example, I almost never use File/Open with notepad. I open a new notepad instance (Windows-R, notepad (or start typing notepad until autocomplete gets it), enter) and drag the file I want to open into the notepad window. This works especially nicely when you’re viewing files that aren’t assigned to be opened in notepad (for example, dsm.opt.) I have a Windows registry hack to open unknown file types in Notepad, but I don’t think it’s working right or I haven’t run it on this laptop yet. I do the same drag-drop trick if I’m attaching a file to an email. That’s one of the reasons (and benefits) of having files on the desktop — I really use them, either by double-clicking to view/edit them, and drag-dropping them into either other folders to store or other applications to share. I use my computer desktop like I do my physical desktop in those respects.

Anyway, the killer feature that I wish Windows supported would allow me to drag an application into another program and it would act as though I’ve moved the active file in that application. For example, if I’m editing a spreadsheet in Excel, and have a compose email window open, if I could grab the Excel icon/tab from the task bar and drop it into the email window that would work like explorer browsing to the directory that contains the excel file I was editing and drag-dropping that into the email. Anyone know how to do that?

I wonder if Vista made any drag-drop improvements?