The Scroll Button
If you are using a mouse with your computer/laptop you may already be familiar with the left button and the right button, but do you use the middle button much?
Talking to different people at different levels of computer skill, I was surprised by the number that did not use the middle button, or know what it could do. I have heard of this being called a middle button, scroll button, middle wheel and scroll wheel. I personally refer to it as the scroll button.
The scroll button can have different functions depending on the program and how it is clicked or scrolled. There are 3 common functions that I have used the scroll button for.
One of the functions that I do not use much is pressing the button and then moving the mouse around to scroll up and down and to the left and right. Personally I don’t use this very often because I find it less reliable and slower than using either my keyboard shortcuts or the programs own scroll bars.
There are 2 other ways I use the scroll button:
- Scrolling : By rolling the wheel forward or backward, you can scroll up and down through your program
- Zooming : By holding down the keyboard’s Ctrl key and rolling the wheel forward and backward you can zoom in and out of your pogram.
The video below demonstrates scrolling and zooming using Excel as an example.
First I just roll the button to scroll up and down and then in the second example I hold the Ctrl key and roll the button to zoom in and out.
If you have problems viewing the video below, you can see it here on YouTube
