Keyboard shortcuts for moving text lines and windows (T-SQL Tuesday #123)

This month’s T-SQL Tuesday is hosted by Jess Pomfret (@jpomfret). She wants to hear about life hacks to make your life easier! In this post, I share two of my most-used keyboard shortcuts. One for moving text lines up and down without copying and pasting, and one for moving windows around without dragging and dropping. I use these all the time :)

Moving text lines up and down

Previously, I was moving text lines up and down in a couple of different ways. Have you ever marked all the text on a line, copied it, then pasted it again? Yeah, I did that all the time. And then I discovered there’s an easier way! Yay 🤩

There are a couple of different flavors to this keyboard shortcut.

In Office applications like PowerPoint and OneNote, you use Shift+Alt+Up and Shift+Alt+Down:

In other applications like SQL Server Management Studio, Azure Data Studio, and Visual Studio Code, you simply use Alt+Up and Alt+Down.

Moving windows around or between screens

Similarly, I was previously dragging windows around multiple monitors using my mouse. Then I discovered you can use Win+Arrows to move windows around. And then I discovered that you can use Win+Shift+Arrows to immediately move windows to the same position on other monitors. Are you showing a full-screen application while presenting? Just win-shift-arrow it to the extended screen and you look like a total pro. Whaaat! 🤯😁

Keyboard all the things!

There you go. Two of my favorite, useful, and timesaving keyboard shortcuts! I use these so much that I don’t think about them anymore - until someone goes “whoa whoa whoa wait what magic did you just do!?” 😎

About the Author

Cathrine Wilhelmsen is a Microsoft Data Platform MVP, international speaker, author, blogger, organizer, and chronic volunteer. She loves data and coding, as well as teaching and sharing knowledge - oh, and sci-fi, gaming, coffee and chocolate 🤓