Keyboard Shortcut Basics – General:
Some shortcuts will work wherever you are in the Microsoft universe, whether you’re in an Office program or a web browser. Although the examples given are for Windows, most of these also work on Mac if the control key is substituted for the command key:
Text Styling: Basic
The three most popular formatting options for style and emphasis are italics (Ctrl + I), bold (Ctrl + B), and underlining (Ctrl + U). Using any of these shortcuts will either apply or remove the formatting from the selected text or, if no text is selected, the formatting is applied to any text that is typed after.
You can even use keyboard shortcuts to increase (Ctrl + ]) or decrease (Ctrl + [) the font size by one point.
Text Editing: Text case
There may be times when, for the purposes of clarity or emphasis, you want all of the text to be UPPER CASE. Or you might just have typed out a whole paragraph with caps lock on, and now it looks like you’re screaming. There’s no need to delete it all and type it out again: just highlight the relevant text and press Ctrl + Shift + A to turn it all lower case/upper case. Alternatively, you can press Shift+F3 to cycle through them.
Text
Editing: Alignment
Do you need text right in the middle of the page for a title? You
can center text with Ctrl + E. After that, you’ll most likely want
to return to normal formatting for the main body of your text, in which case
you can align left with Ctrl + L. Want to put your address in the
top right corner of a letter you’re sending? Align right with Ctrl +R.
And if you want to tidy your document up by having the beginning and end of
every line aligned neatly with your margins, you can justify with Ctrl +
J.
Text Editing: Hyperlinking
This one is handy in a number of situations – not just in Word, but also in PowerPoint and Excel, as well as in most online CMS editors. Highlight a word or sentence that you want to link to a webpage and press Ctrl + K. A dialog box will appear for you to input the web address that the text is to be linked to, and once you’ve entered the information, the selected text will turn into a blue, underlined hyperlink that can be clicked to visit the assigned web page.
Text Navigation
Are
you trying to find a specific section in a long document? Hit Ctrl + F for find, allowing you to enter the
word or phrase that you’re looking for and be taken directly to it. Ctrl + F
is also extremely useful in web browsers and across the Office suite.
Alternatively, pressing F5 in Word opens a more
comprehensive search tool that allows you to navigate to a specific
page, section, or line of your document, as well as use the Find and Replace
function.
Text Selection
There’s no need to always use the mouse to highlight selected text; Shift + Arrow keys will also perform this function. Shift + Left/Right will highlight one character at a time, Shift + Alt + Left/Right one word at a time, and Shift + Ctrl + Left/Right an entire line at a time. Shift + Up/Down will also select entire lines, but once you want to select more than a paragraph at a time, you may find using the mouse is the more productive method.
Word Count
Pressing Ctrl + Shift + G will instantly bring up your word count to provide you with that all-important visual affirmation that you are, indeed, moving steadily towards your goal.