Your attention, please, Windows 7 users! You can inadvertently rotate your monitor screen — and believe hell broke free!

I had a few moments of terror. I pressed one wrong key — and my computer display turned upside down. I feared another virus infected my computer! It took me a few LONG minutes to figure it out. With everything upside-down (including the mouse arrow), I right-clicked on the Desktop, then selected Graphics Options, then Rotation, then Normal. It was a high-wire act!

Unfortunately, the Windows 7 help facility offers NO CLUE whatsoever. I discovered that I mistakenly pressed Ctrl+Alt and then an arrow key! That rotates the display from 0 degrees (Normal) to 270 degrees!

What created the problem also gave me clues on how to solve this Microsoftoquirk. I was writing a Word 2007 document. I pasted text from my Web page where I write about The Last Temptation of Christ, Martin Scorsese’s masterpiece. If I don’t want to preserve the original formatting, I press Alt+Ctrl+V, then I press the DOWN arrow to paste Unformatted Text.

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I usually go very fast with routine computer actions. This time, I pressed the DOWN arrow key before I pressed V. I still needed that high-wire act of fixing the rotation with the mouse. You can try it for fun — now it’s easy to rotate to normal via the keyboard. I realized that the arrow keys were the shortcuts to rotate the display.

Ctrl+Alt and UP arrow key always brigs rotation to Normal.
Ctrl+Alt and DOWN arrow key rotates the display 180 degrees (upside-down).
Ctrl+Alt and LEFT arrow key rotates the display 90 degrees (counter-clockwise).
Ctrl+Alt and RIGHT arrow key rotates the display 270 degrees (clockwise).

It is unfortunate that Microsoft did not document these shortcuts … not intuitively, if so, anyway … A better implementation of the keyboard shortcuts would use 3-key combinations, plus the arrow keys. Shift+Ctrl+Alt+arrow. Adobe InDesign makes intelligent use of the Shift+Ctrl+Alt+ combination, as it is less likely to happen accidentally.

Even computer experts like me do curse like hell when such events happen! I almost became a mystic! I was afraid The Devil (Il Diablo) caused ALL that!! The night before, I watched a crazy movie, allegedly inspired by a true story: The Rite. I only liked Anthony Hopkins’ acting performance … otherwise the movie indicated to me the participants were clinically insane (BIPOLAR DISORDER mixed with HALLUCINATING)!!!

How about that — The Vatican organizing a University of exorcism as during the Dark Age and Inquisition?! The Vatican believes that the Devil is real and it can enter the human body — the same belief that led to the cruel trials of the Witches of Salem in the 1690’s!!

Have fun!

Ion Saliu

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