Having shortcuts on keyboards if you work on Microsoft Word can help make life convenient for you. There are many shortcuts available which can simplify working for you. While there are limitless options, we have compiled the best Microsoft word keyboard shortcuts for you below.
General Shortcuts-
- Ctrl+N: Create a new document
- Ctrl+O: Open an existing document
- Ctrl+S: Save a document
- F12: Open the Save As dialog box
- Ctrl+W: Close a document
- Ctrl+Z: Undo an action
- Ctrl+Y: Redo an action
- Alt+Ctrl+S: Split a window or remove the split view
- Ctrl+Alt+V: Print Layout View
- Ctrl+Alt+O: Outline View
- Ctrl+Alt+N: Draft View
- Ctrl+F2: Print Preview View
- F1: Open the Help pane
- Alt+Q: Go to the “Tell me what you want to do” box
- F9: Refresh the field codes in the current selection
- Ctrl+F: Search a document
- F7: Run a spelling and grammar check
- Shift+F7: Open the thesaurus. If you have a word selected, Shift+F7 looks up that word in the thesaurus.
Document Shortcuts-
- Left/Right Arrow: Move the insertion point (cursor) one character to the left or right
- Ctrl+Left/Right Arrow: Move one word to the left or right
- Up/Down Arrow: Move up or down one line
- Ctrl+Up/Down Arrow: Move up or down one paragraph
- End: Move to the end of the current line
- Ctrl+End: Move to the end of the document
- Home: Move to the beginning of the current line
- Ctrl+Home: Move to the beginning of the document
- Page Up/Page Down: Move up or down one screen
- Ctrl+Page Up/Page Down: Move to the previous or next browse object (after performing a search)
- Alt+Ctrl+Page Up/Page Down: Move to the top or bottom of the current window
- F5: Open the Find dialog box with the “Go-To” tab selected, so you can quickly move to a specific page, section, bookmark, and so on.
- Shift+F5: Cycle through the last three locations where the insertion point was placed. If you just opened a document, Shift+F5 moves you to the last point you were editing before closing the document.
Editing Text-
- Backspace: Delete one character to the left
- Ctrl+Backspace: Delete one word to the left
- Delete: Delete one character to the right
- Ctrl+Delete: Delete one word to the right
- Ctrl+C: Copy or graphics to the Clipboard text
- Ctrl+X: Cut selected text or graphics to the Clipboard
- Ctrl+V: Paste the Clipboard contents
- Ctrl+F3: Cut selected text to the Spike. The Spike is an interesting variant on the regular clipboard. You can keep cutting text to the Spike and Word remembers it all. When you paste the Spikes contents, Word pastes everything you cut, but places each item on its own line.
- Ctrl+Shift+F3: Paste the Spike contents
- Alt+Shift+R: Copy the header or footer used in the previous section of the document.
Selecting Text-
- Shift+Left/Right Arrow: Extend your current selection by one character to the left or right
- Ctrl+Shift+Left/Right Arrow: Extend your current selection by one word to the left or right
- Shift+Up/Down Arrow: Extend selection up or down one line
- Ctrl+Shift+Up/Down Arrow: Extend selection to the beginning or end of the paragraph
- Shift+End: Extend selection to the end of the line
- Shift+Home: Extend selection to the beginning of the line
- Ctrl+Shift+Home/End: Extend selection to the beginning or end of the document
- Shift+Page Down/Page Up: Extend selection down or up one screen
- Ctrl+A: Select the entire document
- F8: Enter selection mode. While in this mode, you can use the arrow keys to extend your selection. You can also press F8 up to five times to extend the selection outward. The first press enters selection mode, the second press selects the word next to the insertion point, the third selects the whole sentence, the fourth all the characters in the paragraph, and the fifth the whole document. Pressing Shift+F8 works that same cycle, but backward. And you can press Esc any time to leave selection mode. It takes a little playing with to get the hang of it, but it’s pretty fun!
- Ctrl+Shift+F8: Selects a column. Once the column is selected, you can use the left and right arrow keys to extend the selection to other columns.
Inserting Things-
- Shift+Enter: Insert a line break
- Ctrl+Enter: Insert a page break
- Ctrl+Shift+Enter: Insert a column break
- Ctrl+hyphen (-): Insert an optional hyphen or en dash. An optional hyphen tells Word not to use a hyphen, unless the word breaks at the end of a line. If it does, Word will use a hyphen where you placed it.
- Alt+Ctrl+hyphen (-): Insert an em dash
- Ctrl+Shift+hyphen (-): Insert a non-breaking hyphen. This tells Word not to break a word at the end of a line, even if there’s a hyphen there. This would be useful, for example, if you included something like a telephone number and wanted to make sure it all appeared on one line.
- Ctrl+Shift+Spacebar: Insert a non-breaking space
- Alt+Ctrl+C: Insert a copyright symbol
- Alt+Ctrl+R: Insert a registered trademark symbol
- Alt+Ctrl+T: Insert a trademark symbol
