Microsoft Word Shortcuts

On this page you’ll find a list of useful Microsoft Word shortcuts – I have not covered all of the available shortcuts, but I have covered all those that I believe will be of use to the majority of people. If you wish to see a full list of shortcuts you can find one by opening the Help menu in Word and locating the ‘Keyboard Shortcuts in Microsoft Word’ page. Many of these shortcuts are generic and can be used with other Microsoft Office programs and indeed some, such as those for Copy and Paste, can be used in any Windows based environment.

For each of these Microsoft Word shortcuts I will give the name of the function, a brief description of what it does and the keyboard shortcut. In cases where multiple key pressed are required it is important to note that you will need to hold down the keys in question in the order I’ve written them until the last key is pressed. For example if the keyboard shortcut was Ctrl-Shift-4 you would need to press and hold down the ctrl and shift keys and then hit 4. Once the last key is pressed you can release all of the other keys.

Function	Description	Shortcut
Copy	Copies selected text or object to the clipboard	Ctrl-C
Cut	Copies selected text or object to the clipboard and deletes it from its current location	Ctrl-X
Paste	Places text or object currently on the clipboard at the location of the cursor	Ctrl-V
Paste Special	Opens the Paste Special menu	Ctrl-Alt-V
Bold	Makes selected text bold	Ctrl-B
Italic	Make selected text Italic	Ctrl-I
Underline	Underlines selected text	Ctrl-U
Font size up	Increase font size of selected text by 1	Ctrl-Shift->
Font size down	Decrease font size of selected text by 1	Ctrl-Shift-<
Superscript	Turns selected text into superscript	Ctrl-Shift-=
Subscript	Turns selected text into subscript	Ctrl-=
Right align	Aligns selected text to the right	Ctrl-R
Left align	Aligns selected text to the left	Ctrl-L
Center align	Aligns selected text to the centre	Ctrl-E
Justify text	Stretches selected text to full page width	Ctrl-J
Undo	Reverses last action taken	Ctrl-Z
Redo	Redoes last action taken	Ctrl-Y
Help	Opens Help menu	F1
Select all	Selects everything in open document	Ctrl-A
Find	Opens search facility	Ctrl-F
Spell Check	Runs Spell Check facility	F7
Word Count	Runs the Word Count facility	Ctrl-Shift-G
Print	Opens the Print menu	Ctrl-P
New Document	Opens new Microsoft Word document	Ctrl-N
Open Document	Opens file explorer for selection of previously saved documents for opening	Ctrl-O
Save	Saves the existing document	Ctrl-S
Save As	Opens the Save As menu	F12

These are very useful shortcuts that can save you a lot of time if you get into the habit of using them regularly. I hope you’ve found this Microsoft Word Shortcuts Tutorial helpful, please feel free to leave me feedback by completing the form at the bottom of the page.

 

Looking for more? Return to Microsoft Word Tutorials or the Office Software homepage

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