A lot of tasks in Word can be performed by using shortcut keys. These are particularly useful because although switching between keyboard and mouse only takes a second it can be distracting and interrupt the flow. As shortcut keys enable the user to perform various tasks without taking his or her hands from the keyboard, does all of this spell extinction for that loyal servant of recent decades, the mouse?

Not quite. The mouse has some useful tricks up its sleeve that warrant its place on your desk, but the keyboard fights back with some tricks of its own that leave the mouse out in the cold. So let us look at a few.

Keyboard
If you have a lot of text you wish to delete, then the quickest and easiest way is usually to highlight the text you want to delete with the mouse and then press the Delete key. You can of course delete text using the backspace key, but this is a rather slow option. You can give your deleting a turbo-charged boost if you hold down the Ctrl key and Backspace together. But be careful, it takes off like a dragster.

Mouse
If you are working on a document that requires you to zoom in and out regularly, instead of clicking on the zoom control each time, simply hold down the Ctrl key and use the scroll button on the mouse (providing your mouse is fitted with one) to zoom in or out of the document. Each click of the wheel will increase or decrease the size of the document by 10%.

Keyboard
If you are busy editing somewhere in the middle of a lengthy document, and then you have a sudden flash of inspiration that you hastily type right at the end of the document, the obvious way to get back to where you were editing would be to use the mouse and scroll back up the pages until you find it. Not so if you use the keyboard - simply press Shift + F5 and the insertion point will be positioned right back where you were last editing.

Mouse
You are probably familiar with moving text boxes and drawing objects about on the page using the mouse, but did you know you can also move regular text with the mouse too? To do this you need to ensure that you have enabled the function so, for pre-2007 versions of Word go to Tools/Options and select the Edit tab. Make sure the Drag and Drop Text Editing box is checked and click OK. In Word 2007 click the Office button and then Word Options. In the dialog box click on Advanced and make sure the Allow Text to be Dragged and Dropped check box is ticked. Click OK.

Now select the text you wish to move and simply click on it with the mouse, drag it to where you want it moved to and release the mouse button to drop it in.

Keyboard
If you still align your paragraphs by selecting the text and then clicking on the relevant icon on the Formatting toolbar, then prepare to be dazzled. Place the insertion point anywhere within the paragraph you want to align and then press Ctrl + E to centre, Ctrl + to align left and Ctrl + R to align right.

Mouse
You can call up the Tabs dialog box by double clicking on the narrow strip directly below the measurements on the horizontal ruler at the top of the screen. Click on the ruler itself to get the Page Setup dialog box.

So it's honours even in the battle between the keyboard and the mouse. There are many more tricks and shortcuts hidden within Microsoft Word and they are certainly worthy of further investigation.