My favorite 10 MS Word shortcuts

If you spend a lot of time in Word, shortcuts can make your life so much easier. Here are 10 of my favorites that I just can't imagine doing without anymore.

F4: Do again.

Simply repeats the last action. Handy when you inserted a row in a table and want to insert another row. Or, when you applied formatting (such as increasing the space before or after a line) that you want to apply somewhere else as well.

Alt + left arrow: The "back" button.

When you clicked a link or reference, this will bring you back to where you came from.

Shift + F5: Go back to your last editing position.

When you open a document, this takes you back to where you last made any changes. Also, if you have scrolled in your document (instead of clicking a link), this will bring you back to where you did your last edit.

Ctrl + Shift + N: Clear all formatting.

If you select no text, it applies the Normal style to your current paragraph. If you select text, it removes all character formatting (such as bold or italic) from the selected text but leaves the paragraph style alone.

If Word goes all crazy on the formatting and you don't know why, use this to clean things up.

Ctrl + Alt + 1/2/3: Apply Heading 1/2/3.

Applies the Heading 1, Heading 2 or Heading 3 style.

Alt + Shift + right arrow: H1 > H2, H2 > H3 etc.

Makes Heading 1 into Heading 2, Heading 2 into Heading 3, etc.

NOTE: You can also change this for a whole Heading section at the same time in the navigation pane. Press Ctrl + F to open the navigation pane and on that pane, click the Headings tab. Right-click on the first heading of the section that you want to change and select Demote.

Ctrl + Shift + space/hyphen: Insert a non-breaking space or hyphen.

A non-breaking space or hyphen doesn't break at the end of a line. Use this to keep telephone numbers together on the same line, or to make sure that measurement values are not separated from their units (such as 1 km or 1 mi.).

Especially useful in tables with narrow columns.

Alt + drag column width in a table: Show exact column width values.

If you have the ruler displayed (View > Ruler), and you drag to change the column width of a table, press the Alt key while dragging to show the exact column widths in the ruler.

F11: Jump to the next hyperlink or field.

Handy, for example, if you want to check if all your hyperlinks still work correctly:

Press F11 to go to the next hyperlink, press Ctrl and click the link to follow it, press Alt + left arrow to go back, and then press F11 again to go to the next hyperlink.

F12: Save as.

MS has buried the save as dialog several clicks deep, and Ctrl + Shift + S (the save as shortcut in virtually every other application) doesn't work. But F12 will do the job instead.

Conclusion

Microsoft really have gone out of their way to make these shortcuts as non-intuitive as possible. I mean: Shift + F5? Ctrl + Shift + N? F12 for something as simple as save as? Come on...

However, if you manage to remember a few of these shortcuts, they might really help you boost your productivity in Word. Have fun!