Keyboard shortcuts are necessary building block for anyone who wants to work faster and more efficiently with their computer. Many people don’t realize the amount of time consumed by moving back and forth between the keyboard and mouse, but it really does add up. By learning and making it a point to use a few basic keyboard shortcuts, you’ll quickly realize how much faster you can get through a Word document when your hands are dedicated to the keyboard.
Here’s a list of our favorite keyboard shortcuts from Microsoft’s List of keyboard shortcuts for Word 2002 and Word 2003:
- Apply Heading To apply heading 1, 2 or 3, press ALT+CTRL+1, ALT+CTRL+2, and ALT+CTRL+3, respectively. Headings are an excellent way to start of sections of a document, and can later be used to automatically generate a table of contents.
- Apply List Bullet To start typing a bulleted list, press ALT+CTRL+L.
- Bold Text Press CTRL+B to bold text.
- Copy Use CTRL+C to copy the current selection.
- Delete WordTo delete the entire word preceding the cursor, press CTRL+DEL.
- Find Text Press CTRL+F to bring up the Find Text dialog box. Using a program’s Find feature is always faster than manually scanning for something.
- Italics Press CTRL+I to italicize text.
- Paste Press CTRL+V to paste the contents of the clipboard.
- Print Use CTRL+P to print the current document to the default printer.
- Quick Text Selection Different combinations of the ctrl, shift and arrow keys enable you to select blocks of text without dragging the mouse around.
- Select A Word Hold CTRL+SHIFT and press the left/right arrow keys to select text word by word.
- Select Line(s) Hold CTRL+SHIFT and press the up/down arrow keys to select all the way to the beginning or end of the current line. Pressing the arrow key more than once will let you select multiple lines.
- Save Press CTRL+S to save the current document.
- Underline Press CTRL+U to underline text.
Update 10/9/06: corrected “Quick Text Selection” with the proper method of selecting multiple words and lines, thanks to input from the vigilant readers of Lifehacker.
[tags]Microsoft Word,Microsoft Office,keyboard shortcuts,productivity[/tags]
