It's a good rule of thumb to remember that Blender has a vast array of modeling tools which don't appear as icons in the UI, and must be called up from hotkeys. The key commands for bringing up a very powerful list of modeling functions in edit mode are your "W" key, for the Specials menu, CTRL+V for your vertex menu, CTRL+E for your edge menu, and CTRL+F for the faces menu. Sometimes the functions in these menus can be used across the sub-element levels. For example, you can use the "Grid Fill" tool, which appears in the Face menu, while in edge mode, to quad cap open-ended objects, like cylinders.

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