Why take the time to learn Keyboard Shortcuts? Because you'll be able to work faster. Reaching for a mouse or a keyboard takes your hands away from the keyboard, so every time you need to reach for your mouse, you're losing time that you could have spent creating something on your keyboard. There's a (possibly apocryphal) story that when Wall Street investment banks bring on new brokers, managers keep an eye out for the rookies using their mice instead of their keyboard. If a manager sees a rookie using their mouse too often, they walk over and cut the mouse cord with a pair of scissors! I don't think we need to go to such extremes, but the point here is that knowing keyboard shortcuts can make you faster and more productive.
The video below will show you how to enable keyboard shortcuts in Gmail and walk through some of the most useful ones
Keyboard Shortcuts Covered:
| Shortcut | What it Does |
| ? | See All Keyboard Shortcuts |
| c | Compose New Message |
| C | Compose New Message in a New Window |
| CTL+Enter | Send Message |
| x | Select Message |
| j and k | Cycle through messages; j goes backwards, k goes forwards |
| r | Reply |
| a | Reply All |
| f | Forward |
| ! | Mark as Spam |
| e | Move to Archive |
| # | Delete |
| l | Label |
| v | Move Message To... |
| z | Undo |
| g, i | Go to Inbox |
| g, s | Go to Starred Messages |
| g, t | Go to Sent Messages |
| g, d | Go to Drafts |
| g, a | Go to All Mail |
| g, l | Go to Label |
| g, k | Go to Google Tasks |
| g, c | Go to Contacts |
| / | Place Cursor in the Search Box |