Inadvertent or Intentional Rotation of Display, Screen in Windows via Keyboard Shortcuts

Your attention, please, Windows users! Axiomatic ones, you can inadvertently rotate your monitor screen — and believe hell broke free! Of course, those in the know do such operations consciously, on purpose.

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 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.

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

The rotate display is present in all Windows versions prior to Vista — but not directly, via shortcuts. In previous versions of Windows, only the mouse operation worked. As per above, the user right-clicked on the Desktop, then selected Graphics Options, then Rotation.

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 1690s!

• This graphics behavior works with all Windows versions, including 10 and 11 — and probably forever.
• If you want to intentionally rotate the display, beware it always works with Intel graphics cards, but not with some other graphics hardware.
• The keyboard shortcuts are not enabled on all PCs.
• To enable the keyboard shortcuts:
  • Click Start, then All Apps
  • Scroll down to Intel Graphics Command Center and click
  • In the left pane, click the System icon (4 little squares)
  • Toggle to On Enable System HotKeys
  • Windows 10 and 11 no longer display the rotation in degrees, but as Landscape and Portrait, each as normal and flipped.
  • Thus, Landscape (flipped) or Ctrl+Alt+DownArrow turns the screen upside down. Press Ctrl+Alt+UpArrow to come back to the normal screen (0 degrees).

Have fun, Axiomatics!

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• Press simultaneously Ctrl+Alt+DOWN arrow to turn the display upside-down in order to see it in normal view! I did visual gymnastics to reach the graphics options and the four display-rotation positions!

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