Brilliant Command Prompt (CMD) Tricks You Probably Don’t Know About

So here are some great tips you can use to make yourself comfortable while working with the Command Prompt. First things first, the shortcut for Command Prompt is cmd and that’s all you need to type in the Run box or the Start search in order to bring it up. Now on to the cool tricks, which might be known ones for the geeky ones among you, but on the other hand, have the potential to incite the a-ha moment for many other everyday computer users among you.

Let’s roll, shall we?

1. Open Command Prompt in a Folder

When you open the command prompt, it opens up in either User or System folder depending upon whether you ran it as administrator or not. Now the thing is, if you want to execute a file in any particular folder, you would have to use the change directory(cd) command to navigate to the folder which can be a problem if the directory is nested way too deep.

To ease things you can open the folder in your Windows Explorer, hold Shift key when you right-click in the folder and select Run command window here  to directly open the CMD prompt with the path to that folder directly.

2. Enable QuickEdit for Easy Copy/Paste

One thing I miss the most in Command Prompt is the ability to easily copy and paste text using the conventional Windows hotkeys. Normally, one would have to use the right-click context menu options to copy and paste text, but if you enable QuickEdit, you can do them using simple shortcuts.

To enable the QuickEdit mode, right-click on the Command Prompt Title Bar and select Properties. In the Properties Window under the Option Tab enable QuickEdit Mode. That’s all; you can now quickly select text by dragging your mouse pointer. Pressing the enter key on the selected text will copy the text to the clipboard, and a simple left click would be enough to paste the text.

3. Run Command Prompt as Admin

Many commands require you to run command prompt as administrator. When you search for CMD in Start Menu, other than selecting Run as administrator from the right-click menu, you can simply press Ctrl+Shift+Enter to open it with admin privileges. This trick will work for all the programs installed on your system.

4. See Command History

You can see last used commands in a session using the navigation buttons, but if you would like to see a list of all the commands, you can get it by pressing the F7 button.

Alternatively, you can use the command doskey /history  to list these commands in the command prompt itself.

5.Know your IP address, DNS address

Command Prompt can even let you know your IP address. Just type ipconfig/ all in the command prompt and press Enter. Along with your IP address and DNS servers, command prompt will also return a ton of information like your host name, primary DNS suffix, node type, whether IP Routing ,Wins Proxy, and DHCP are enabled, your network adapter's description, your physical (MAC) address etc . 

I am sure these tricks will make you a little more comfortable with the Windows Command Prompt. If you are one of our more tech savvy readers who has been relying on the Command Prompt for years, why not share some cool tricks that you’ve got up your sleeve? Chip in with your comments!