I’ll be honest—I’ve only really started making the most of Microsoft Word’s keyboard shortcuts over the past few years, despite having used the program for decades. As a result, I’m still discovering new ones I wish I had known earlier! Here are some that I now use every day.
To assign new keyboard shortcuts to your most-used commands in Microsoft Word, press Alt > F > T to open the Word Options dialog box, click “Customize Ribbon,” and select “Customize” at the bottom of the window. Then, choose a command within a category to see existing shortcuts and create your own.
6Shift+F3 (And Alt > H > 7): Toggle Between Cases
As an academic proofreader, I often come across headings that don’t have the correct title case, as well as sections of text written in block capitals.
Unfortunately, selecting some text and pressing the Caps Lock key doesn’t adjust its capitalization, since this key is a toggle, not an action.
Instead, to fix this issue, I can select the relevant text (if I need to change more than one word at the same time) or place my cursor within the relevant word (if I only need to change one word), and press Shift+F3 as many times as necessary until the case is correct.
Shift+F3 x 1
Shift+F3 x 2
Shift+F3 x 3
lowercase
Title Case
In the example above, the word “Section” needs to be in block capitals. So, tochange it from title case to block capitals, I can simply place my cursor anywhere within the word, and press Shift+F3 once.
Next, to change the section heading to title case, I can use my Arrow keys to move the cursor to before the word “The,” press Shift+End to select all the text on that line after the cursor, and press Shift+F3 three times. The reason I need to press it three times on this occasion is that the first word is capitalized, meaning Microsoft Word recognizes this as already being in title case, whereas actually, this is only true for the first word.
At this stage, I still need to change the “small” words (“and,” “of,” and “in”) in the heading to lowercase, since title case makesallselected words begin with a capital letter.
The least efficient way to do this is to go through each word and change it manually. Alternatively, I could place my cursor within the words I want to change, and press Shift+F3 until they’re lowercase. However, the method I prefer is to perform a case-sensitive Find And Replace (Ctrl+H) when I’ve finished proofreading the whole document, and change all affected words to lowercase at the same time by clicking “Replace All.”
Finally, I need to fix the block capitals in the paragraph. To do this, first, I’ll place my cursor at the start of the paragraph, and press Ctrl+Shift+Down to select the whole paragraph. One option at this point would be to press Shift+F3 until all the words are lowercase. However, this would also affect the first word of the sentence, meaning I would need to fix this manually.
Instead, I can select the paragraph, and press Alt > H > 7 > S to force it to adopt sentence case, which means that the first word is capitalized, and the rest of the sentence is lowercase.
I still need to fix other things, like capitalizing “Premier League,” and changing “VAR” to block capitals. However, as before, I’ll make these adjustments as wholesale changes using case-sensitive Find And Replace when I reach the end of the document.
If you’re writing an academic document or for a publication, always follow the prescribed style guide.
5Ctrl+Shift+Space: Non-Breaking Space
Non-breaking spaces in Microsoft Word prevent related words from being split across two lines. In this example, “Mr. E.” is separated from “John”, and “6” is separated from “pm,” due to natural line breaks. As a result, the text looks unusual, and the flow is disrupted.
To fix this, rather than pressing the Spacebar between these words, I can press Ctrl+Shift+Space to insert a non-breaking space. Now, these elements are forced to stay together on the next line, improving the layout and maintaining the flow.
To double-check where non-breaking spaces have been inserted in a Word document, press Ctrl+Shift+8. This displays non-printing characters, and a non-breaking space is represented by a superscript zero, much like the degree (º) symbol. In contrast, normal spaces are represented by a filled-in circle (•).
4Alt+Shift+Up/Down: Move a Whole Paragraph
This keyboard shortcut is remarkably simple yet incredibly useful.
In this example, I have come to realize that the paragraph in red would be better placed beneath the third paragraph.
One way to fix this would be to select, click, and drag the paragraph using my mouse, but I prefer using keyboard shortcuts where possible. In this case, I could place my cursor at the beginning of the paragraph, press Shift+End, and cut (Ctrl+X) and paste (Ctrl+V) it to the new position. However, this process is laborious, requiring far too many steps.
Instead, I can use one simple keyboard shortcut to make this change in less than two seconds. After placing my cursor anywhere within the red paragraph, when I press Alt+Shift+Down, the paragraph moves down, switching it with what was previously the third paragraph.
Likewise, if I later realize that the paragraph worked better in its previous position, all I have to do is place my cursor within the paragraph again, and press Alt+Shift+Up. And that’s it! It really is that straightforward!
3Ctrl+Shift+N and Ctrl+Alt+[Number]: Apply Styles
Styles in Microsoft Word are a great way to apply consistent formatting to different parts of a document. For example, the Normal style is for the main body, while various Heading styles can be applied to chapter titles to denote sections and subsections.
In this example, the Heading 1 style has been applied to lines two and eight, the Heading 2 style has been applied to line five, and the remaining lines are formatted in the Normal style.
Although line numbers are used in these examples for demonstration purposes, styles are applied to whole paragraphs—separated by the pilcrow (¶) symbol when non-printing characters are displayed—unless youinsert a style separator.
However, let’s assume I actually wanted the paragraph on line two to be formatted in the Normal style. To do this, I need to place my cursor anywhere within the relevant text, and press Ctrl+Shift+N.
Now, I want the first paragraph to be formatted in the Heading 1 style. This time, after placing my cursor within that paragraph, I need to press Ctrl+Alt+1.
If I wanted to apply Heading styles 2 or 3, I would press Ctrl+Alt+2 or Ctrl+Alt+3. However, if I were to add more Heading styles to my document, I would need to create customized keyboard shortcuts.
So, here’s a summary of the keyboard shortcuts for switching between the Normal and Heading styles in Microsoft Word:
2Alt+Shift+D/T: Insert the Current Date or Time
Microsoft Word lets you insert the current date and time without needing to type it manually.
What I love most about these keyboard shortcuts is that I can make them refresh when I update the document’s fields or reopen the document, and I can also make them static.
To insert the current date, press Alt+Shift+D. Similarly, it’s Alt+Shift+T for the current time. These shortcuts add the date and time to your document as fields—placeholders for information that can be automatically updated.
At the moment, the date is displayed in the British style. To change this to the U.S. format, I’ll place my cursor within the field, press the Menu key (also known as the Application key) to launch the context menu, and press E to launch the Field dialog box.
I can now press Tab until the Field Properties menu is activated, use my Arrow keys to choose the correct format, and press Enter once I’m happy.
By default, the fields update automatically to reflect the current date and time whenever the document is reopened. I can also place my cursor within a field and press F9 to update an individual field, or press Ctrl+A > F9 to update all fields.
On the other hand, if I want to turn the date and time fields into static, editable text, I need to press Ctrl+Shift+F9 with my cursor in the relevant field, or Ctrl+A > Ctrl+Shift+F9 to fix them all together.
1Alt+Q: Search Microsoft Word’s Tools
One of the Microsoft Word keyboard shortcuts I probably use the most is Alt+Q, which activates the Search tool at the top of the window.
I find this particularly useful if I can’t remember a keyboard shortcut for a command, or if I want to do something I don’t do very often.
For example, when I added line numbers to one of my earlier screenshots, I pressed Alt+Q to activate the Search field, typed “line numbering,” and used my Arrow keys and Enter to activate the tool. This meant I didn’t have to trawl through the many tabs and menus on the ribbon manually, saving me a great deal of time.
