Word Keyboard Shortcuts

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As much fun as it would be to type all the Microsoft Word keyboard shortcuts here - for those of you who absolutely refuse to use the wonderful online manual in MS Word - I'm afraid Microsoft might get really angry with me for copying stuff without their permission! Unless I do get permission, you'll have to settle for instructions on how to find the information yourself.

A complete list of all of the Microsoft Word keyboard shortcuts can found in the Word Help files that the folks in Redmond worked really hard to provide.

The Word Basics article contains instructions for using Help and there are a few instructions later on this page.

Here's how to find all the information on keyboard shortcuts:

  1. Click on Help on the menu bar.
     
  2. Select Contents and Index.
     
  3. Find the Reference Information topic (the little purple book) and double click on it.
     
  4. Look for the Keyboard Guide subtopic and double click that.
     
  5. Click on the Shortcut Keys article. That will open a window with a list of links to pages containing every kind of keyboard shortcut you could ever want.
     
  6. Click on the gray button next to the list you'd like see (under the heading What do you want to do?) to move directly to that page.
     

Here's a sample of a few of the available keyboard shortcut categories:

  • "Use keys to work with documents"
  • "Use keys to format characters and paragraphs"
  • "Use keys to merge documents"
  • "Use keys to work with menus"
  • "Use keys to work with toolbars"
  • "Use function keys"

WordPerfect Users: In the Keyboard Guide topic, you'll find a separate article on WordPerfect keyboard equivalents that will help you make the transition. And the next topic down is Switching from WordPerfect. check it out; it will make the change to MS Word a lot easier.

Help on Using Help

To print a Help topic:

  1. Click on Options.
     
  2. Select Print Topic...
     

When the topic is very short, I select Copy to copy the article, then paste it into a Word document. I can fit several topics onto a single page, instead of printing a lot of pages with one short topic on each one! (You may have to do a bit of formatting to get rid of some of the non-printing stuff, but it's worth the effort.)

Keep Help on Top lets you keep the instructions you need right in front of you while you continue to work in your document. Try this:

  1. From within Help, click on Options.
     
  2. Select Keep Help on Top.
     
  3. Click on On Top.

Use Bookmarks to help you find an article quickly next time you want to refer to it:

  1. From within an open Help article, click on Options.
     
  2. Select Define Bookmarks... to open the Define Bookmarks dialog box.
    The program will automatically insert the title of the current topic into the Bookmark name field. You can accept that name, if you'd like, by clicking on OK, or:
     
  3. Enter a new name for the bookmark, then click OK.
     

Next time you want to refer to the article:

  1. Open any Help article.
     
  2. Click on Options, then on Bookmarks.
     
  3. From the list of bookmarks you've created, select the name of the article you want to go to.
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