Here are some of my favorite shortcuts for typing on the iPads keyboard.
- When you typing and you reach the end of a sentence, double tap the space bar. A period will be added automatically.
- If you touch the wrong key, you can slide your finger to the correct key. The letter isn’t entered until you release your finger from the key.
- Words are suggested as you type, to reject a suggested word, finish typing the word as you want it, then tap the suggestion to dismiss it before typing anything else. Each time you reject a suggestion for the same word, iPad becomes more likely to accept your word.
To use the suggested word, type a space, punctuation mark, or return character.
- To enable Caps Lock, double tap the shift key. Cap Lock has to be enabled in settings first. Go to settings, general, keyboard, then Enable Caps Lock.
- To bring up the apostrophe without swapping keyboards, hold the ,! key.
- When you are typing a website URL in the address bar of the Safari browser, there’s a special “.com” key, you can hold that key for other popular TLDs including .edu, .org and .net.
- When typing an email address, press and hold the dot (.) key and you’ll get a pop-up to auto-complete the email address.
- If you want to edit a url or text in a search box without deleting everything, hold your finger down on the area you want to edit, after a couple of seconds a magnifier will appear, now you can move your finger to precisely where you want to edit.
There are more shortcuts you can use by holding on the keys. I’ve found these to be the most useful. Try them out, we are interested in hearing your comments.
Heya, just wanted to thank you for the great post, I’m looking forward to your next one
Great ideas.
But how do you correct a typo in the middle of a url when you don’t want to delete everything before the typo? How do you move back without deleting? Any ideas appreciated.
That is a great question. Just, hold your finger on the url until you see the magnifying window and move it to where you want it. I will update the post soon. Thanks for your question.
Hi how do I get a list of persons, articles, photos etc to scan down the list when it’s been downloaded from the web.
What happens is the box of items from say a to f come up up bit when I try to see the rest by pushing the down button but the whole page goes down. There are no controls to scan down the list.
Hope that makes sense
Thanks for the tips! i am having a hard time figuring out how to override the initial upper case letter that apple has, which makes it hard to get into password screens that require case specific passwords that starts with a lower case letter. Any ideas?
There is a setting that will disable this. Go to settings, general, keyboard, and turn off auto capitalization.
Thanks, for commenting.
I think I know what you are saying. This sound like a list of suggestions while typing in Safari browser. There is not a way to scroll down the list that I know of. The suggestions will just continue to change as you type to more accurately predict what you are typing.
Thanks for commenting.
How do I get to the typing scream with the space bar…haven’t figured it out. Also, how to delete Apps and move icons around the desk top?
The typing screen should automatically appear when you need to enter text, as soon as you touch the search bar in safari, mail, notes, etc. To delete or move app icons, hold your finger on a app until it starts to jiggle (about 3 seconds).
I need some help with copying an email address, I cannot seem to select the text without it emailing the person. I want to copy the address so that I can add it to our online CRM system but I cannot see a why to copy and then paste an email address from the To or From field in Mail or in Google Mail. Help if you can would be amazing !!!!!
If you hold your finger on the email address for 2 – 3 seconds, you should get a pop up with an option to copy.
This will work in mail or the web browser.
When I tap on the browser bar I do get a typing screen but it never includes a space bar….I can only type a series of words with no space between. I know it sounds simple but how can I move between the differing typing screens?
I also meant to mention that short of canceling all caps, to go to lower case at the beginning of a word you can use the up-arrow. And it cancels the capitalization.
Sherry,
When typing in the browser bar, the typing screen does not include the space bar because a url should not have a space. You will notice that the space bar will appear when you type in the search bar. However, you can use the magnifier or backspace while typing a url.
How do I add an attachment an email?
I added a 2nd keyboard layout how do I remove it again?
I was typing on notes and it totally wiped off without pressing the delete key, how do I get the notes back? They are very important notes.
How do I get a book I purchasednon iPad to my iPod
How do I type in word on my pc and sync to my ipad
Does anyone have a problem with the iPad keyboard not typing the correct letter?
How do I scroll within a window without scrolling the whole page?
Joseph,
You can use 2 fingers to scroll within a frame on a webpage on the iPad.
I mention in this webpage on number 11.
http://ipadhelp.com/ipad-help/how-to-use-ipads-ios-4-2-features-and-other-tips/
Thanks.
How do I underline or activate bullets while writing a mail?
The iPad mail app can only send emails in plain text. There are some apps that will send html in email but I have not used one that I can recommend.
This should be something addressed in a future iOS update.
Let Apple know here.
http://www.apple.com/feedback/ipad.html
HI there. I use gmail for my business from my iPad 2 and in order to get a good heading, date, signature and font for the body of each e-mail etc I set up everything in an e-mail once and saved it in my drafts folder online in gmail. This is then retrievable whilst using email on my iPad from my drafts folder and so I just copy and paste this into each e-mail I compose from my iPad 2. It looks and works really well for me except that the iPad in each email I send changes all my addresses and contact numbers to a blue font colour and also underlines them. Is there a way to stop it from doing this ? It would be really great if you or anyone could help me with this.
Mad girly,
Email for the iPad does not currently support rich text email but there are some limited rich text features being added to the mail app with iOS 5 (Bold, italic, underline but no colored font). However, there are several apps that will allow you to send rich text in emails on the iPad. I recommend Evernote. They just added rich text support and it’s a great free app.
Thanks.
Can you turn the word suggestion off? Every time I type my email address – shard grave (it should be one word) – iPad gives me the word suggestion as shown here but I can’t delete it. It’s driving me crazy because I can’t enter my email name on anything. Can I turn the word suggestion off somehow? Oh yeah I do try to click on the x but it still doesn’t go away.
You can turn off Auto-Correction by going to Settings-> General-> Keyboard-> Turn Off Auto-Correction.
It will still suggest email address, I don’t think there is a way to disable the email suggestions. I normally leave the auto correct feature on but it can be annoying at times. If you actually misspell the word or if you watch the suggestion as you type, you can just tap the space bar and the correct word appears.
You are right about taping the x, it should go away. It is small and may be hard to tap. The auto correct feature is suppose to learn from your corrections, so it should get better the more you type.
Is ends alotttttttt odff ttttttimee ddelettttting crertttttain letttttttttttttrs ass you can seee..help
The typing screen is popping up all the time when I am not tapping on it. I am taping on other places but typing screen keeps coming up and i have to keep tapping it off. Very annoying. Thanks for any help.
My google maps app won’t work any more. Any suggestions?
When typing an email my keyboard will not appear. Why and how can I fix this?
How do you get the keyboard click sound to turn back on on an iPad? The Keyboard Click setting is turned on, and the Mute button is turned off, but I can’t get the clicking sound back.
Lisa,
You can go to Setting-> General-> and turn on Change with Buttons, then while typing you change turn up the volume and it should increase the sounds of the clicks. If you still can’t hear the clicks and you are certain that the sound is working and Keyboard Clicks are turned ON, you can reboot your iPad and see if that helps.
All of a sudden, my keyboard has a huge space in the center of the first 5 letters in each row. I don’t have a clue why?..
While typing a sentence on iPad 2, how can I move back the cursor without using backspace, so that the alphabets / words are not deleted?
can the I Pad work with doc and excel files?
How do u fix your keyboard when u get a huge space in the middle
Just got my ipad for christmas yeah. How do i get spaces between words without having to touch asian italic off. Also how do i stop it from choosing to translate from english? And could someone please tell me where the enter bar is when you are typing a message on eg. Facebook?
After I sync a PDF file and view it in my bookshelf, the name changes to a bunch of mumbo jumbo. Why? I read someplace about going to iTunes and doing properties of that PDF file and change the name there. No can do. Right clicking does not get you properties. You only get itunes relayed options as if it was a song. When I did the properties in Windows Explorer it showed the correct name so I just copied the name again. I deleted the other version from the iTunes list and added that file again and did another sync. I opened that file again, and once again the iPad changed the name. It was deleted from my iPad before doing the sync, also.
Additional information. I did a properties from one of the PDF files and the name is a web address, which is what this particular file name is being changed to. I canmot change the name there but it is allowed for us to download these files. They have a download link provided foe us. The name that appears in Windows Explorer’s file name is in the box above the name that appears on iPad after younopen it in the bookshelf.
Liz,
I am not an iPad techy person but do you have you iPad set for English? Check your General Settongs. Scroll down to International and click that and see if it is set for English. Maybe it isn’t and that is why you are getting that translate from English and having to touch asian italic off to get a space. I never heard of any of that mentioned before. Also, on Facebook, On the iPad keyboard, if you press “Return” it will post you post in Facebook.
General Settings, International
Interesting, if I open my PDF’s in QuickOffice Pro HD instead of the iPad bookshelf, the name of the document does not change.
My keyboard has split in two- how do I get it to reunite?