When you’re doing a lot of typing, stopping to use the mouse can disturb the flow of your typing, and slow down your work speed. There are a heap of shortcut keys for use in Windows and the Microsoft Office Suite, most of them work across the suite. Here are some of the key combinations that can help speed up your work that you might not have known about.
In Microsoft Office 2007 applications (ie: Word, Excel) pressing ALT will bring up a menu which allows you to navigate the ribbon menus using keys rather than the mouse.
So if, for example, you wanted to create some envelopes via a mail merge. You could just press ALT then M to go to the “Mailings” menu, then E to produce envelopes, which open the Envelopes dialog box.
Otherwise, you can just remember the ALT + combinations for the various ribbons:
- ALT then H will show the key combinations for the functions on the Home ribbon.
- ALT then N will show the key combinations for the functions on the Insert ribbon
- ALT then P will show the key combinations for the functions on the Page Layout ribbon
- ALT then S will show the key combinations for the functions on the References ribbon
- ALT then M will show the key combinations for the functions on the Mailings ribbon
- ALT then R will show the key combinations for the functions on the Review ribbon
- ALT then W will show the key combinations for the functions on the View ribbon
- ALT then L will show the key combinations for the functions on the Developer ribbon
You can also learn the combinations that will perform any menu commands frequently. For example, ALT then M then E will bring up the dialog box to produce envelopes using a mail merge.
The CTRL key also provides many shortcuts:
For Editing
- CTRL + A = Select all
- CTRL + C = Copies text
- CTRL +N = Opens a new document
- CTRL +S= Save
- CTRL +V = Paste
- CTRL +W = Prompt to Save then Exits
- CTRL +X = Cut text
- CTRL +Y = Repeat
- CTRL +Z = Undo
To Open Dialog boxes
- CTRL + D = Opens the Font dialog box
- CTRL +F = Opens the Find dialog box
- CTRL +G = Opens the GoTo dialog box
- CTRL +H = Opens the Replace dialog box
- CTRL +K = Opens the “Insert hyperlink” dialog
- CTRL +O = Opens the “Open” dialog box
- CTRL +P = Opens the “Print” dialog
For Formatting
- CTRL + B = Bold text
- CTRL +E = Toggles current paragraph between Left Align & Centered text
- CTRL +I = Italic text
- CTRL +J = Toggles current paragraph between Justified and Left Aligned text
- CTRL +L = Toggles current paragraph between Justified and Left Aligned text
- CTRL +M = Indents paragraph
- CTRL +Q = Removes paragraph formats
- CTRL +R = Toggles current paragraph between Right & Left aligned
- CTRL +T = Indents paragraph text
- CTRL +U = Underline
- CTRL +1 = Single line spacing
- CTRL +2 = Double line spacing
For moving around a document
- CTRL + arrow = move 1 word or line in the direction of the arrow
- CTRL + Home = Top of document
- CTRL + End = End of document
- Adding SHIFT to any of these will highlight the text as well.
That’s my list of Office shortcuts, if you have any that you love and I haven’t listed, please let me know!
