Every time you move your hand from the keyboard to the mouse, you lose a second or two. Over a day of writing, that adds up. The good news is that you don’t need to memorise hundreds of shortcuts — a dozen or so cover almost everything you do in Word.
On a Mac, swap Ctrl for Command (⌘) in most of these.
Quick reference
| What you want | Shortcut |
|---|---|
| Save | Ctrl + S |
| Undo / redo | Ctrl + Z / Ctrl + Y |
| Bold / italic / underline | Ctrl + B / Ctrl + I / Ctrl + U |
| Select all | Ctrl + A |
| Find / replace | Ctrl + F / Ctrl + H |
| New page | Ctrl + Enter |
| Ctrl + P |
1. The everyday essentials
- Ctrl + S — save. Press it every few minutes out of habit.
- Ctrl + Z — undo your last action. Press it repeatedly to go further back.
- Ctrl + Y — redo (or repeat your last action).
- Ctrl + C, Ctrl + X, Ctrl + V — copy, cut and paste.
- Ctrl + P — print.
2. Formatting shortcuts
- Ctrl + B — bold
- Ctrl + I — italic
- Ctrl + U — underline
- Ctrl + E — centre a paragraph
- Ctrl + L / Ctrl + R — align left / right
- Ctrl + ] and Ctrl + [ — make selected text one point bigger or smaller
- Shift + F3 — cycle through UPPERCASE, lowercase and Capitalise Each Word
3. Selecting text quickly
- Double-click a word to select it.
- Triple-click to select the whole paragraph.
- Shift + arrow keys extends the selection one character or line at a time.
- Ctrl + Shift + arrow keys extends it a whole word or paragraph at a time.
- Ctrl + A selects the entire document.
4. Moving around a document
- Ctrl + Home — jump to the very start.
- Ctrl + End — jump to the very end.
- Ctrl + left/right arrow — move one word at a time.
- Shift + F5 — go back to where you were last editing. Brilliant when you reopen a document.
5. Page and layout shortcuts
- Ctrl + Enter — insert a page break (much better than pressing Enter lots of times).
- Ctrl + Shift + 8 — show or hide formatting marks such as ¶.
- Ctrl + 1, Ctrl + 2, Ctrl + 5 — single, double and 1.5 line spacing.
6. Reach any button with Alt
Tap Alt on its own and small letters appear over every ribbon tab. Press a letter to open that tab, then more letters appear over each button. For example, Alt, N, T opens Insert → Table. Once you’ve done a sequence a few times it becomes muscle memory.
Troubleshooting
A shortcut does something different. Some laptops need the Fn key for F-keys — try Fn + Shift + F3, for example.
Ctrl + Y doesn’t redo. It only works when there is something to redo. If you haven’t undone anything, it repeats your last action instead.
Wrapping up
Pick three shortcuts you don’t use yet — Ctrl + Enter, Shift + F3 and Ctrl + Home are great starting points — and use them all week. Next week, add three more.
