12 Keyboard Shortcuts For Windows File Explorer You Didn't Know You Needed

• John shares 12 keyboard shortcuts for Windows File Explorer in this video.
• The shortcuts work for both Windows 10 and Windows 11.
• View shortcuts for easy navigation, file management, and more.
• Viewers are encouraged to share their favorite shortcuts in the comments.

Hey, there. My name is John, and in this video, I'm going to share 12 of my favorite keyboard shortcuts for Windows File Explorer. And this will work in both Windows 10 and Windows 11. So let's jump right into it.

The first keyboard shortcut is opening File Explorer, and that shortcut is Windows key plus E. So hold down the Windows key on your computer, press the letter E, and that will open the File Explorer window.

Now, if you're like me and you like the navigation pane over here in the Quick Access with some of these pinned items to get to this right away after you open File Explorer, you can hold Shift and press Tab. So Shift Tab will set focus over here. You can see the Quick Access is now blue. And now you can use the up and down arrows on the keyboard to select items over here that you have pinned. So if I want to select one of these items, I'll just hit Enter.

And now I can see the contents of that folder. To get back to the main window over here, we can just hit the Tab key. So I'll hit Tab again. That'll set focus over here on the main window. And then again I can use up and down arrows to scroll and hit Enter to either open a file or a folder.

Next, I'll look at the shortcut to open a new window with the same folder. The shortcut for that is Control N. So here I'm in File Explorer, I'm going to hit Control N; that's going to open a new window here and navigate to the exact same folder that I was in the previous window.

This is great when you're copying or moving files between folders because now you can just navigate to one of these folders here and then drag it over to another folder over here. And you don't have to spend extra time navigating to your folder in this window over here.

When you're done with that new window, or done with any File Explorer window, the keyboard shortcut to close the window is Control W. So hold Control and press W. Alternatively, you can use Alt F4.

The shortcut to create a new folder is Control Shift N. So hold Control Shift and press N. That will create a new folder and, of course, prompt you to rename it. We have a new course on Power Automate, so I'll quickly rename it that and hit Enter to confirm the change.

Now, I also wanted to mention, as you're watching this video, if you find one of these shortcuts to be your new favorite, leave a comment below and let us know which one it is.

Or if you're watching the video and you're saying, "Hey, John, you completely forgot my favorite shortcut," I'll leave a comment below as well. We'd love to learn that from you.

All right, so now let's talk about navigation. If I want to go back to the previous folder, I can just hit the backspace key on the keyboard. That will take me back to the previous folder. It's the same as hitting the back button up here in the toolbar. And just a little side note there, that'll also work in your web browser if you want to go back in your web browser.

As you can see, when we hover over the button here, Alt left arrow will also go back, so you can use that as an alternative to backspace. And if you hover over the forward button, we'll see that Alt right arrow will go forward. So Alt left and right can also be easy ways to navigate.

Now, you also notice over here we have up and Alt up arrow is the shortcut for that. Now, it will take you up to the parent folder.

So let's say we go to a completely different folder over here, and we want to go up and see the parent folder of this, we can just hit Alt up arrow and that'll take us to the parent folder.

Next, we'll look at some shortcuts for renaming files and folders. So here I have some Excel files in this folder, and let's say I want to rename these. With this first file selected, I'm going to hit F2 on the keyboard, and that will jump me into edit mode where I can rename the file. If you're using a laptop keyboard, you might need to hold down the Fn or function key when you press F2.

As you can see here, it just selects the file name. So I can just start typing right here. The file name I'm just going to call this one, and it does not select the extension. So that's nice; it won't change the extension. You can just start typing the file name and then, of course, hit Enter to confirm your change.

Now, if you want to rename multiple files or folders, there's an additional shortcut for that. So I'm going to hit the down arrow key here, and then I'm going to hit F2 to edit this file. I'm going to just rename it to two for right now.

Instead of hitting Enter, I'm going to hit Tab. When I hit Tab, that's going to confirm the change and jump me down to the next file or folder and put it in edit mode so I can rename that file. So for now, I'm just going to rename this one to three, hit Tab, rename this one to four, and that's the last one I'll hit Enter and that will allow me to quickly rename multiple files and folders using F2 plus Tab.

Next, we'll look at selecting the address bar. This is the address bar up here in File Explorer. To select it, you can press Control L and that will select the text in the address bar. From this point, you can copy that text and paste it somewhere else.

Or if you have a folder path copied, you can paste it right here and hit Enter and that will navigate to that folder. Now, an alternate shortcut for this is Alt D. So hold Alt and press D and that will select the address bar as well.

That might be a little easier as more of a one-handed operation where Control L is a two-handed operation. Now a little bonus tip here is that both of those shortcuts will also work in your web browser.

Next, we'll look at using the search feature here in File Explorer, and the keyboard shortcut for that is Control F. So that'll set focus to search. Let's say we're looking for a logo here. I can just type that in and hit Enter and that will show me all the results for the files and folders within the folder that I was in.

Of course, now you can use the up and down arrows to select here. If you want to go back and not select any of these items, just hit backspace and that will take you back to the folder you were in.

Next, we'll look at changing the view. So I'm in a folder here with a lot of image files, and let's say I want to switch the view to large thumbnail. The keyboard shortcut for that is Control Shift 2. So that'll change the view here to view the large thumbnails. If I want to go back to the details view, the keyboard shortcut for that is Control Shift 6 and that will take me back to Details.

Now if you're wondering why it's Control Shift 2 and Control Shift 6. There are actually other shortcuts here. If you go up to the view menu, you can see all of these shortcuts here. Essentially, Control Shift 1 is extra large icons, Control Shift 2, which we just looked at, is large icons, all the way down to Control Shift 6 is details, and you can use all of these going all the way down to content.

Now another way to remember this is down here in the bottom right corner. You can also hover over these two buttons here, and if we hover over this button, you'll see that Control Shift 6 will take us to Details view and this is large thumbnail (Control Shift 2).

Finally, we'll take a look at opening the right-click menu. The shortcut to do this is either the menu key or Shift F10. So I'm just going to hit the menu key on my keyboard.

Not all keyboards have a menu key. If yours does have it, it'll be between the Control and Alt keys on the right side of the keyboard. My favorite Logitech keyboard does have a menu key, and I'll put a link in the description below this video to an article that explains more about that keyboard.

If you're on a laptop, most laptops, unless you're using a Microsoft laptop, also do not have a menu key. So in that case, press Shift F10 and that will open up the right-click menu here.

Now one other note here. If you're using Windows 11 and you right-click an item with the mouse, you'll notice that it has this condensed right-click menu or this condensed context menu with a limited number of items. Then you can press show more options down here to open up the full menu.

As you'll notice right here, it says that Shift F10 is the shortcut to open that menu, and that's the same as the menu key. So instead of doing that two-click operation to right-click and then click show more options here, you can just select any item and either hit the menu key or Shift F10 and that will open up that full right-click menu.

So I hope these shortcuts for File Explorer save some time out of your day. Again, if you have a new favorite, leave a comment below and let us know what that is.

Or if we missed one, let us know in the comments below as well. If you enjoyed this video, hit the like button. If you're new to Excel Campus, hit the subscribe button, and then head over to excelampus.com/free to grab our free Excel Pro Tips eBook. Thanks again for watching. Have a great day, and I'll see you in the next video.