Command Prompt Powershell Quick Keys - Microsoft Windows


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Command Prompt Powershell Quick Keys

Donald Blackwell

3 months ago

I've been working on cleaning up several towers and laptops and have had to re-acquaint myself with the windows terminal(s). I used to do everything in dos back in the 80's and early 90's but have lost the "muscle memory" of shortcuts working with the prompt. But for a lot of things, it's just a lot faster than digging around in the GUI of Windows - even in God Mode.

Anyway, I had to re-remember a lot of the basic quick keys and such just to be able to read the screen anymore (yeah, I need new glasses). So have spent time looking up shortcuts on line. Figured I'd share some of the basics here:

Command Prompt Only:
If the colors make the text hard to read, change the color by typing "color", a space, and then a two-character color code where the first character represents the background color and the 2nd the foreground. The characters can be 0-9 or A-F.
For example: color 71 while give a white background with blue text
To know what characters give what colors, just type "color ?"
Nice for setting contrasting color if you have trouble seeing

Donald Blackwell OP @Reply

3 months ago

Also, if you're trying to follow instructions from a web page or other file, like an image, and you need to type the text exactly as you see it:

In both PowerShell and CommandPrompt:

Hold CONTROL + SHIFT while using your scroll wheel. Scrolling up makes the terminal window background MORE OPAQUE while scrolling down makes the background MORE TRANSPARENT so you can see the page/image behind the terminal to copy the text.

	Donald Blackwell OP @Reply 3 months ago
To increase the Font Size in Command Prompt or PowerShell Terminal, you can hold the CONTROL key and press the "+" key to increase the font size or the "-" key to decrease the font size. Alternatively, you can hold CONTROL and scroll with your mouse/trackball/keyboard scroll wheel to increase or decrease the size CONTROL + 0 sets it back to default

Richard Rost @Reply

3 months ago

Donald - Thanks for sharing all of that. I used to be a DOS keyboard warrior myself, even after Windows 95 came out with a graphical interface. Back in the Windows 3 days you always started off in DOS, and if you wanted to do anything system related you had to know the commands. Even after 95, I kept using the DOS prompt for years. I still pop one open now and then, but I have forgotten a lot of those shortcuts too. This might actually make a good couple of videos to put together. What do you think? I started redoing my Windows Basics videos a while back, but to be completely honest, they don't get a whole lot of views.

Donald Blackwell OP @Reply

3 months ago

I don't go there often, but sometimes, cli is just faster.

As I was typing all that, I kinda wondered if simple tips like that were kinds of things you keep on your "list" for those days where you're running behind, need to drop a video and don't have anything prepped. Little shorts that you can put together quick, (in comparison to a full techhelp that starts off short and then get those "eureka!" moments "what if we try this", lol. But short topics that could be dropped in on the fly just to keep in the YouTube ranks. And the occasional non-Access might pop you up to other users, draw them here where they see all the other resources available.

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