Useful little shortcuts for BlackBerry messaging

For many people, the BlackBerry is an indispensable tool during their working day. The ability to have your emails delivered swiftly and securely to your hand can improve your personal efficiency immensely. So, how many people do you see with their BlackBerry in hand flicking their thumb over the trackpad and scrolling, scrolling, scrolling, scrolling through the messages? You'd think there would be an easier way, wouldn't you? Well, there is. Here's a helpful list of little shortcuts to make navigation and use of your BlackBerry that little bit better.

Message list shortcuts:

Press 'C' to compose a new email
Press 'R' to reply or 'L' to reply to all on the highlighted message
Press 'F' to forward the highlighted message
Press 'T' to skip to the top of the message list and press 'B' to skip to the bottom
You can move one page at a time by using Space or Shift + Space.
Press 'P' to skip to the start of the previous day and 'N' to skip to the start of the next day
When you have a thread of messages, use 'J' and 'K' to navigate your way from one message to the next
Press 'U' to find unread messages. You can also toggle the unread status of a message using Alt + U
Want to view Sent Messages? Alt + O is your friend (think 'Outbound')
Alt + S will take you to SMS messages if you are using a combined view in your messages.
Finally, you can use 'I' as a shortcut to file a message.

When typing messages:

Use the Space key twice to create a full stop. If you are in an email field, the first time you press Space, it will give you an '@' symbol. Each subsequent press will give you a dot '.'. In a web page field, the Space key will just give you a dot for each press.

BlackBerry has an auto-correct feature that allows you to properly punctuate contracted words without having to mess about with Alt and trying to find the apostrophe key. Type youll and it will automatically correct itself to you'll when you press space. In some cases, the contracted word will look like another word and will not auto-correct, e.g. ill instead of I'll. To auto-correct to I'll, type il instead. The same goes for wel (we'll), hel (he'll), shel (she'll), wont (won't), shouldnt (shouldn't), wer (we're) and so on. You get the idea.

You can also send your mobile number and PIN in a message if you want people to have it. Just type mynumber and mypin in the message and it will auto-correct for you.

There are lots more hidden shortcuts in the BlackBerry when using the Calendar, Contacts, pictures, music player, etc.

If there is a positive response to this article, I will post more.