Digital Home Advisor

40 nuggets of valuable advice on getting the most from your BlackBerry, including shortcuts, email tips and phone functions.

Margaret Genet, operations analyst at Aflac knows BlackBerrys inside out. In fact, she's nicknamed 'technology concierge' because she can teach anyone how to be more efficient with mobile devices and applications.

Most of her tips and tricks can be found by trawling BlackBerry websites and reading user manuals from cover-to-cover. But who has the time? Not me, that's for sure. Instead we opted for a 15-minute chat with Margaret, and discovered 40 nuggets of her most valuable advice.

Typing shortcuts

1. To capitalise a letter with one click, hold down the letter key 2. To insert a full stop, click the Space Key twice 3. Turn CAP Lock on by pressing the ALT key followed by the right Shift key. Turn it off by pressing either Shift key 4. Turn Number Lock on by pressing the ALT key followed by the left Shift key. Turn it off by pressing either Shift key 5. Type an accented letter or special character by holding the corresponding letter and scrolling left or right with the trackball 6. Insert the current date into a message or document by pressing the L key followed by D and the Space key 7. Insert the current time into a message or document by pressing the L key followed by T and the Space key

Messaging (e-mail and SMS)

1. In e-mail in-box, press the S key to search for a sender or a word within a subject line, and any mail folder regardless of message was sent or received 2. Within in-box, access the complete list of messages sent by hitting the ALT key followed by the O key 3. Within in-box, access the complete list of messages received by hitting the ALT key followed by the I key 4. Within in-box, access the complete list of SMS text messages received by hitting the ALT key followed by the S key 5. Within in-box, access phone log by hitting the ALT key followed by the P key 6. Within in-box, access the voicemail log by hitting the ALT key followed by the V key 7. To delete all messages sent or received before a specific date, highlight that date with the cursor, hit the BlackBerry Menu key, select Delete Prior and confirm selection 8. To enable automatic spell checking of e-mail messages, click the Options icon on BlackBerry home screen. Then click Spell Check and select the Spell Check E-Mail Before Sending option. 9. To do a manual spell check, click the BlackBerry Menu key within a composed message and select Check Spelling 10. When a message is being spell checked, suggested fixes to unrecognised words can be ignored by clicking the escape key