Control Your Cursor Without a Mouse

You can control the movement of the cursor across your screen using your keyboard. Th is is handy if your mouse or keypad has developed a fault or stopped working. This setting is turned off by default. To turn it on and customize it, click the Start button, type mouse in the search box and then click ‘Change how your mouse works’ (in Windows 8, type mouse in the Modern tile interface and then click ‘Change how your mouse works’). 

Next, tick ‘Turn on Mouse Keys’ and click ‘Set up Mouse Keys’. Drag the Pointer speed sliders to High and Fast. Tick the box below Pointer speed, then click Apply, OK and OK again at the bottom of the screen.

You can use the group of numeric keys on the right of your keyboard to move your cursor across the screen (for laptops without a dedicated numeric pad the ‘fn’ or Num Lock key will usually enable number mode for certain keys). On the numeric pad, each key represents a direction (corresponding to its position in the grid).

For example, press 8 to move your cursor up, press 2 to move down and press 3 to move toward the bottom-right corner. Press Ctrl+the numeric key to move the cursor faster in that direction. Press 5 to select something and doublepress 5 quickly to open something (the equivalent of double-clicking with your mouse).