Powerful Word Shortcuts everyone needs to know

Shortcuts are powerful tools to enhance the convenience of using Microsoft Word. This article will help you speed up your work by showing you the most important shortcuts you need to know.

Shortcuts for selecting and editing a text in Microsoft Word

For selecting and editing a Word document you will mainly need the arrow keys, the Ctrl button and the Shift button.

• Ctrl+A: Select the whole document
• Ctrl+X: Cut selected section to the Clipboard
• Ctrl+C: Copy selected section to the Clipboard
• Ctrl+V: Paste contents from the Clipboard
• Shift+Home: Extend selection to the beginning of the line
• Shift+End: Extend selection to the end of the line
• Ctrl+Shift+End/Home: Extend selection to the end or beginning of the document
• 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+Shift+ Arrow Left/Right: Widen the existing selection by one word to the left or right
• Shift+ Arrow Left/Right: Widen the existing selection by one character to the left or right
• Ctrl+Shift+ Arrow Up/Down: Widen the existing selection to the beginning or end of the paragraph
• Shift+ Arrow Up/Down: Extend selection one line up or down
• Shift+ Page Up/Page Down: Extend selection one screen up or down
• Alt+Shift+R: Copy the header or footer from the previous section of your document

Shortcuts for formatting a MS Word document

Word offers a big number of shortcuts for formatting characters and paragraphs. We will show you the most important ones.

• Ctrl+Shift+< or >: Change font size one preset size at a time
• Ctrl+[ or ]: Change font size one point at a time
• Ctrl+U: Set underline formatting
• Ctrl+Shift+D: Set double underline formatting
• Ctrl+I: Set italic formatting
• Ctrl+B: Set bold formatting
• Ctrl+E: Center a paragraph
• Ctrl+L: Left-align a paragraph
• Ctrl+R: Right-align a paragraph
• Ctrl+Shift+C: Copies the character formatting of a selected text
• Ctrl+Shift+V: Pastes formatting to a selection
• Ctrl+Shift+K: Formats all letters as lowercase
• Ctrl+Shift+A: Formats all letters as uppercase
• Ctrl+Q: Remove all paragraph formatting
• Alt+Ctrl+1: Change to Heading 1 style
• Alt+Ctrl+2: Change to Heading 2 style

How to create your own shortcut in Microsoft Word

If there are operations you need very often, you may consider creating your own shortcut for them. This is how it works:

• Open a Word document and navigate to the area “File” and choose “Options”. A new window will open.
• Choose “Customize Ribbons” and find the button “Customize”.

• A new window will open. Here you can choose the function, you want to create a new shortcut for and assign a shortcut.
• Please keep in mind, that all shortcuts need to include either the “Alt”, the “Ctrl” or “Shift” button.
• If you are trying to assign a shortcut, which is already used for another function, Microsoft Word will ask you to change this shortcut first.

The next article will tell you all about, how to double space in Microsoft Word without using shortcuts.