In Shakespeare's King Lear, the character of Kent has some pretty choice words to say about the letter Z, which he deems unnecessary.

"Thou whoreson zed! Thou unnecessary letter!"

If I were to rewrite this Shakespearean masterpiece in a modern-day office setting, I could update Kent's outburst to be aimed at a phenomenon I'm sure many of you will be familiar with.

"Thou whoreson Insert! Thou unnecessary key!"

While Insert sits comfortably among the other keys like it is one of the boys, it is rarely, if ever, called into use. It does occasionally remind you that it is functioning properly, however, when it is accidentally activated and you type over your existing text to an extent that depends on whether you look at the screen or your hands when you type. If you do the latter, then vast swathes of text can vanish, as the overtype function gobbles up your existing text like an alphabetic Pac-man.

But is it really unnecessary? Certainly in the many years I've been using Word I have never had to overtype text. I did an online search to see if I could find any examples of people actually using the overtype function, and the general consensus appears to be that the key was more commonly used back in the early days of computer programming, but is rarely used today. As far as current use goes, however, I discovered that overtyping is a useful function for those who edit data files of a fixed length, so the Insert key is not quite redundant.

But if the only time a key is used is inadvertently, then it might be worth considering its removal, and disabling the Insert key is a simple operation.

Click on a blank area of a toolbar and select Customize from the bottom of the menu that appears. Select the Commands tab and click on the Keyboard button. Select All Commands from the Categories list box. Then, in the Commands list box, scroll down to Overtype. You will see Insert in the Current Keys box. Click on this and the Remove button will become active. Click it and your days of accidental overtyping are over.

But, as the song goes, you don't know what you've got till it's gone, so perhaps disabling the Insert key entirely may not be the best solution. You know how these things go; no sooner have you disabled the key than you actually need to use it for some reason. It makes sense, therefore, to keep the key functioning, but to create a new combination of keys to activate it. Having to press three keys simultaneously would make any unintentional activation highly unlikely (but not impossible).

To create a new shortcut to activate the overtype function, follow the steps as above until you get to the Customize Keyboard dialog box. Place your cursor in the Press new shortcut key box and then press the selection of keys you wish to use for your new shortcut, for example, holding down Ctrl, Alt and Insert. Alt+Ctrl+Insert will appear in the box to confirm your new key combination. Click on Assign and you now have the overtype function on stand-by, but you can type away merrily knowing that it will not be activated inadvertently.

There is, however, more to the Insert key than overtyping, so before you disable it, either completely or with a new shortcut, you might like to consider the following use.

If you are using an application, or browsing a website and you want to make a screenshot and insert it into your Word document, try this. Create your screenshot by pressing the Print Screen key. Go to your Word document and hold down the Shift key and press Insert. You now have a screenshot in your document at the press of a couple of keys, one of which is that pesky Insert.

So think carefully before you disable the Insert key completely, or you may find yourself bemoaning its loss with another Shakespearean quote; "Insert, Insert! My kingdom for Insert!"