File Name and Folder Name Completion at the Command Prompt Page 1 of 2

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Tip:
File Name and Folder Name Completion at the Command Prompt

Command Prompt offers an invaluable file-name and folder-

name completion feature that can save you the trouble of typing
Follow Our Daily long paths or file names. If you start typing a command string
Tips and then press Tab (the default completion character), Command
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Prompt proposes the next file or folder name that’s consistent
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with what you’ve typed so far. For example, to switch to a folder
that starts with the letter Q, you can type cd q and then press the
folder-name completion character as many times as necessary
until the folder you want appears.

While the completion character for file names and folder names is the Tab key by default. You can
select a different completion character by modifying the CompletionChar and PathCompletionChar
values in the HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Command Processor registry key. These DWORD values
specify the file and folder completion characters, respectively, for the current user. (To change the
settings for all users, modify the same values in HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Command Processor.)

Keep in mind that if CompletionChar is defined and PathCompletionChar is either absent or set to
the hexadecimal value 0x40, the CompletionChar setting will work for both file completion and
folder completion. In all cases, the completion characters should be specified as hexadecimal
values—such as 0x9 for Tab, 0x4 for Ctrl+D, 0x6 for Ctrl+F, 0xC for Ctrl+L, and so on.

You can also override the registry settings for an individual Command Prompt session by starting
the session with Cmd /F:on or Cmd /F:off. Cmd /F:on starts a Command Prompt session with Tip of the Day [ http://technet.microsoft.co
Ctrl+D as the path-completion character and Ctrl+F as the file-completion character, disabling the
completion characters set in the registry. Cmd /F:off starts a Command Prompt session with no A Fast Way to Navigate Between Excel
completion characters, regardless of your registry settings. Cmd /F:on and Cmd /F:off both disable Worksheets
the Tab key as a completion character. [ http://technet.microsoft.com/magazine/71b09f28
-55dc-4ee6-a792-0a7bb6c20c32.aspx ]
From the Microsoft Press book Windows 7 Inside Out by Ed Bott, Carl Siechert, and Craig Stinson. Here’s a simple, but very helpful tip for jumping
directly to different worksheets in large Excel
documents.

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