Have you ever wondered what that 'extra' mouse button on the right-hand side of your mouse is for? Well, even if you haven't been curious, it's something that you should not only learn a little about, but after you've used it, you will wonder how you ever got along without it! With a spare 10 minutes, a little curiosity, and this article, you will soon be using the right mouse button (right-click) like a pro.

So what exactly does the right-click do? In techie talk, it brings up on top of your work a context sensitive menu. In English, this means that when you right-click on an object, a list of common tasks will pop up. This 'list of common tasks' will change depending on exactly which object you 'right-click' on.

Let's work an example to get the idea. Clear the desktop of any applications; that is, either close them, or shrink them to icons on the taskbar. The plan is to have your basic Win 95 desktop (the one you see when you first start your PC) occupying the majority of your screen. Now, position the mouse pointer anywhere on the background wallpaper. Now the big moment - click the right mouse button. Up pops a list of common things you might do on the desktop. With the LEFT button, select the 'Line up Icons' choice. That's a neat way to clean up your screen. Now right-click on the desktop once more and select (with the left button again) the Properties choice. You should now see a window that has several tabs such as background, screen saver, and appearance. These windows allow you to customize the look of your desktop.

Now try right-clicking your recycle bin. Notice that you get another menu, but that the selections are now different than the selections that appeared when you right-clicked the desktop. This pattern will continue to almost any Windows 95 object, or any Windows application object. And this is where the real power of the right-click lies. If you right-click on a cell in Excel, you will get a list of things you can do with an Excel cell, such as copy, move, or edit. If you right-click a file in the Explorer, you will get a list of things you can do with a file, like copy, move, rename, delete, and so forth.

But what if you don't find what you want, or right-click on something accidently? Easy! Just left-click anywhere else on the screen, but off the menu that popped up. The menu will disappear and you are back where you started. Pretty simple stuff; you can always back out of a 'bad right-click'.

So there you have it. Right-clicking made easy. If you've ever thought, "I wonder if I could...", with one quick right-click, you probably can!