Word shortcuts

Here is a selection of the best Word keyboard shortcuts. How can you save time when using Office with keyboard shortcuts? When it comes to writing quickly in Microsoft Word, the biggest obstacle to efficiency is managing the side tasks. So, these MS Word shortcut keys are more than helpful, they literately give us more time to focus on important tasks.

In other words, searching for formatting options, navigating between menus, or moving around the document quickly. Many ways to call Word shortcuts: MS Word shortcut keys, Word keyboard shortcuts or simply Word keys.

A selection of 48 Word keyboard shortcuts for greater effectiveness

Indeed, the writing itself is usually the most time-consuming part of the process – you must find the inspiration! However, there are plenty of Word keyboard shortcuts that will help you to be much faster when writing a document.

We’ve categorised a selection of the best of these keyboard shortcuts.

Basic shortcuts for Word and for Windows

Firstly, this section presents the basic shortcuts for Word, some of which are Windows shortcuts because they are common to many programs. Like copy and paste.

  • To start, copy the selected text or object: CTRL+C
  • Cut selected text or object: CTRL+X
  • Paste text or object: CTRL+V
  • Undo an action, the famous Control Z: CTRL+Z
  • In the same way, renew or repeat an action: CTRL+Y
  • Cancel an action that has not been validated: ESC
  • Create a new document of the same type as the active document: CTRL+N
  • Save a document: CTRL+S
  • Open a document: CTRL+O
  • Finally, to close an open Word document: CTRL+W

Word keyboard shortcuts to print and preview documents

Secondly, keyboard shortcuts to view Word documents and print them quickly.

  • To start printing a document: CTRL+P
  • Activate or deactivate the Print Preview mode: ALT+CTRL+I
  • Move around the preview page by zooming in: Arrow keys
  • Move from one preview page to the next: PG.PREV or PG.NEXT
  • To move to the first zoomed-out preview page: CTRL+ORIGIN
  • Finally, to reach the last zoomed-out preview page: CTRL+FIN

List of keyboard shortcuts for displaying and using Word windows

Thirdly, the management of window sizes in Word, but also in other Windows software.

  • First, to close the active window: CTRL+W / CTRL+F4
  • To restore the size of the active window after enlarging it: ALT+F5
  • Switch to the next window: CTRL+F6
  • In the same way, switch to the previous window: CTRL+Shift+F6
  • Then, to enlarge or restore a selected window: CTRL+F10
  • Capture a screen in the clipboard: Print Screen
  • Finally, to capture an image of the selected window to the clipboard: ALT+Print Screen

Using the Open and Save As dialog boxes with Word

Fourthly, the Word keyboard shortcuts for managing the save and save dialog boxes.

  • Indeed, to display a context menu for the selected item: Shift+F10
  • To move from one option or area to another within a dialog box: Tab
  • Open the Look in list: F4 or ALT+I
  • Update the list of files: F5
  • Delete the selected folder or file: Delete
  • Create a folder: ALT+SHIFT+4
  • Toggle between the available folder views: ALT+SHIFT+5
  • Display the Open dialogue box. CTRL+F12 or CTRL+O
  • Display the Save As dialog box: F12
  • Go to the previous folder in the explorer: ALT + Left Arrow
  • To go to the next folder: ALT + Right Arrow
  • Go to the top folder in Windows Explorer: ALT + Top Arrow

MS Word software shortcuts checklist

Finally, a checklist for the best Word keyboard shortcuts.

  • First, to decrease the font size by one value: CTRL+SHIFT+< To increase the font size of a value: CTRL+ALT+MAJ+>
  • Delete the formatting of a paragraph or a character. CTRL+SPACE
  • Open the Statistics dialog box: CTRL+SHIFT+G
  • On the other hand, to create a non-breaking space: CTRL+SHIFT+SPACE
  • Create a non-breaking dash: CTRL+- (hyphen)
  • In the same way, to apply bold formatting: CTRL+G
  • To apply italic formatting: CTRL+I
  • And for underlined formatting: CTRL+U
  • To do a special paste: CTRL+ALT+V
  • And finally, to paste the format only: CTRL+Shift+V

If you are working with web pages and Word documents

To go further, the best keyboard shortcuts for splitting Word documents.

  • Split the document window: ALT+CTRL+S
  • Remove the split from the document window: press ALT+CTRL+S a second time

In short, this article presents the best Word keyboard shortcuts. That is, the most useful shortcuts for saving time when editing Office documents.

Here is another on how to create an automatic table of contents with Word.

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