There are too many handy shortcuts within Microsoft Word, but I’m going to try to list out the easier ones for you to review. This is not to say that you should memorize all of them! Rather, check them out and see if a few would be especially useful to the way you use your computer. Practice one or two and you may discover they change your computer-life!

  • Control + A: Highlights & Selects all text in a document.
  • Control + B: Emboldens selected text.
  • Control + C: Copies selected text to clipboard.
  • Control + D: Opens the Font Formatting window.
  • Control + E: Toggles text between Align-Left and Centered.
  • Control + F: Opens a Find field.
  • Control + G: Moves to the next result after using the Find tool.
  • Control + H: Opens the Find & Replace tool.
  • Control + I: Italicizes selected text.
  • Control + J: Toggles text between Align-Left and Justified.
  • Control + K: Inserts a hyperlink into your document.
  • Control + L: Toggles text between Align-Left and Justified.
  • Control + M: Indent entire paragraph.
  • Control + N: Opens a new document.
  • Control + O: Opens the Open File window.
  • Control + P: Opens the Print options window.
  • Control + Q: Removes paragraph formatting (indentation/spacing).
  • Control + R: Toggles text between Align-Left and Align-Right.
  • Control + S: Opens the Save window.
  • Control + T: Creates a hanging indent.
  • Control + U: Underlines selected text.
  • Control + V: Pastes text from clipboard into the document.
  • Control + W: Closes the open document
  • Control + X: Cuts selected text, saving it to the clipboard.
  • Control + Y: Redo the action that was just Undone (see next shortcut).
  • Control + Z: Undo the last action taken.

Many of these shortcuts should carry over to Chromebooks and Linux computers. On Apple computers, most of these shortcuts will also work, if you use the Command key instead of Control.

Most of these shortcuts will also work in OpenOffice, LibreOffice and other non-Microsoft word processing apps.