If you find yourself frustrated when trying to locate programs or settings when navigating the start menu with your mouse or touchpad, look no further.  The feature you seek has been there all along.

Simply press the Windows key on your keyboard and type in the program or setting you’re looking for, wait a second, and the results will appear in the Start Menu.  Use the arrows on your keyboard to highlight the program or setting you want and press enter.  Voila!

This has come in handy numerous times when I’ve had a phone or e-mail conversation with an end user that needed to quickly turn off Windows Firewall or find the name of their computer.  For instance, to turn off the firewall, you could enter “turn off firewall” and Windows Firewall would show up in the results, or “computer name” would display “find the name of this computer”.

It’s an easy shortcut to remember and could save you from a lot of unnecessary clicking.