This post will focus on a feature in Windows 10, Cortana, a digital assistant.

I will attempt to keep this short by explaining as quickly as I can: the Cortana keyboard shortcuts we are going to use, what it does and a quick description with an occasional screen shot to drive it home.  That being said, the General Window 10 and Microsoft Edge posts will have more content.  So, let’s get started on some Cortana keyboard shortcuts.

Cortana

Let’s take a look at a couple of shortcuts that will help us interact with Cortana to get her help.

Action – Open Cortana to Listening Mode

Shortcut Key – Windows Key + C

Description:  Hitting this key combination, Cortana will start instantly listening to your request.  You should see a Cortana listening box show up on the bottom left of your screen above your Cortana task bar item.

Once Cortana starts listening, you can ask her a question.  Try, “What is the weather today?”  Cortana should respond to you by telling how the weather looks for today, as well as show you more information that might be helpful.

Action – Launch Web and Windows Search

Shortcut Key – Windows Key + S

Description:  With this keyboard shortcut, Cortana will open up a window that will show you information that she has found information that is important to you, but also allow you to do a search.  You can have her search by either typing in what you want her to find in the text field at the bottom, or by clicking the microphone icon to the right of the text field.

For example, since I am a big LeBron James fan, I might want to find more information on him.  So, I would simply type “lebron james” in the text field and hit Enter.

I would now see a search result for LeBron James similar to the one below.

It is worth mentioning that you can have Cortana find things on your system as well.  Try typing this, “find files I recently worked on.”  Before you hit enter, you will notice that at the top of the Cortana window, she is ready to search your documents.

Now, hit Enter and check out the results she gives you.

Pretty nice huh?  From here you can select a file from not only your PC but form OneDrive as well.  You can also apply sort order, the types of files and even show ALL the matches as opposed to just the top files recently used.