You can accomplish a surprising amount without moving your hands off the keyboard in the Microsoft Word app for Windows or macOS.
Word’s Ribbon interface is great for finding everything you might ever want to do in the word processor — particularly things you don’t do frequently, like inserting footnotes or doing a mail merge.
But if you’re looking to do common tasks fast, you’ll find keyboard shortcuts far more useful. Why bother to lift your hands from the keyboard if you want to open or close a document, apply formatting to text and paragraphs, do a spell check, navigate through a document, or undo and redo actions? With keyboard shortcuts you won’t have to.
There are keyboard shortcuts to accomplish a vast array of tasks in the Word desktop client, in both the Windows and Mac versions. (Fewer shortcuts are available for the Mac, but you can create your own custom keyboard shortcuts if you like.)
We’ve listed the shortcuts we’ve found the most useful below. Most work whether you’re using a subscription (Microsoft 365/Office 365) or non-subscription version of Word. For even more shortcuts, see Microsoft’s Office site.
Note: On Macs, the ⌘ key is the same as the Command or Cmd key.
Useful Word keyboard shortcuts
Composing and editing
Action | Windows key combination | Mac key combination |
Create a new document | Ctrl-N | ⌘-N |
Open a document | Ctrl-O | ⌘-O |
Save a document | Ctrl-S | ⌘-S |
Open the Save As dialog box | F12 | ⌘-Shift-S |
Close a document | Ctrl-W | ⌘-W |
Print a document | Ctrl-P | ⌘-P |
Select everything in the document | Ctrl-A | ⌘-A |
Copy selection to the clipboard | Ctrl-C | ⌘-C or F3 |
Paste from the clipboard | Ctrl-V | ⌘-V or F4 |
Delete selection and copy it to the clipboard | Ctrl-X | ⌘-X or F2 |
Undo the last action | Ctrl-Z | ⌘-Z or F1 |
Redo the last action | Ctrl-Y | ⌘-Y |
Add a comment | Ctrl-Alt-M | ⌘-Option-A |
Turn revision tracking on or off | Ctrl-Shift-E | ⌘-Shift-E |
Run spelling and grammar check | F7 | ⌘-Option-L or F7 |
Text formatting
Action | Windows key combination | Mac key combination |
Make text bold | Ctrl-B | ⌘-B |
Make text italic | Ctrl-I | ⌘-I |
Underline text | Ctrl-U | ⌘-U |
Double underline text | Ctrl-Shift-D | ⌘-Shift-D |
Underline words but not spaces | Ctrl-Shift-W | ⌘-Shift-W |
Make text strikethrough | Alt-H, 4 | ⌘-Shift-X |
Make text all caps | Ctrl-Shift-A | ⌘-Shift-A |
Make text superscript | Ctrl-Shift-+ | ⌘-Shift-+ |
Make text subscript | Ctrl-= | ⌘-= |
Make font size larger | Ctrl-Shift-> | ⌘-Shift-> |
Make font size smaller | Ctrl-Shift-< | ⌘-Shift-< |
Open the Font dialog box | Ctrl-D or Ctrl-Shift-F | ⌘-D |
Insert a hyperlink | Ctrl-K | ⌘-K |
Paragraph formatting
Action | Windows key combination | Mac key combination |
Left-align text | Ctrl-L | ⌘-L |
Right-align text | Ctrl-R | ⌘-R |
Center-align text | Ctrl-E | ⌘-E |
Justify text | Ctrl-J | ⌘-J |
Indent a paragraph | Ctrl-M | Ctrl-Shift-M |
Remove paragraph indentation | Ctrl-Shift-M | ⌘-Shift-M |
Change to single-line spacing | Ctrl-1 | ⌘-1 |
Change to double-line spacing | Ctrl-2 | ⌘-2 |
Change to 1.5-line spacing | Ctrl-5 | ⌘-5 |
Remove paragraph formatting | Ctrl-Q | |
Open the Apply Styles task pane | Ctrl-Shift-S | |
Open the Styles pane | Ctrl-Alt-Shift-S | ⌘-Option-Shift-S |
Document navigation and views
Action | Windows key combination | Mac key combination |
Move up one paragraph | Ctrl-Up arrow | ⌘-Up arrow |
Move down one paragraph | Ctrl-Down arrow | ⌘-Down arrow |
Move right one word | Ctrl-Right arrow | Option-Right arrow |
Move left one word | Ctrl-Left arrow | Option-Left arrow |
Move to the top of the document | Ctrl-Home | ⌘-Home or ⌘-Fn-Left arrow |
Move to the bottom of the document | Ctrl-End | ⌘-End or ⌘-Fn-Right arrow |
Open the Navigation pane to search for text, images, more (Windows) / use the search box (Mac) | Ctrl-F | ⌘-F |
Open the Search and Replace dialog box (Windows) / Find and Replace pane (Mac) | Ctrl-H | Ctrl-H |
Open the Go To dialog box | Ctrl-G or F5 | ⌘-Option-G or F5 |
Switch among the last four places in the document you edited | Ctrl-Alt-Z | |
Switch to Print Layout view | Ctrl-Alt-P | |
Switch to Outline view | Ctrl-Alt-O | |
Switch to Draft view | Ctrl-Alt-N | |
Switch to Read Mode view | Alt-W, F | |
Split the document window or remove the split | Ctrl-Alt-S | |
Display Help | F1 |
Ribbon navigation
Action | Windows key combination |
Hide or display the Ribbon | Ctrl-F1 |
Display the Ribbon shortcut keys | Alt |
Go to the File tab | Alt-F |
Go to the Home tab | Alt-H |
Go to the Insert tab | Alt-N |
Go to the Design tab | Alt-G |
Go to the Layout tab | Alt-P |
Go to the References tab | Alt-S |
Go to the Mailings tab | Alt-M |
Go to the Review tab | Alt-R |
Go to the View tab | Alt-W |
Go to the Help tab | Alt-Y |
Go to the Ribbon’s search box | Alt-Q |
Looking for more help with Word for Windows? If you have an Office subscription, see “Word for Microsoft 365 cheat sheet.” If you have a non-subscription version of Office, see “Word 2016 and 2019 cheat sheet.” We’ve also got cheat sheets for an array of other Microsoft products, including older versions of Office.
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