Assigning Keyboard shortcuts to Styles in Microsoft Word

Why assign keyboard shortcuts to styles?

One of the most useful things you can do to customize your Microsoft Word installation is to assign some shortcut keys to commonly used paragraph styles like Heading 1, Heading 2, Body Text etc. Assigning keyboard shortcuts makes you significantly faster, as you can simply hit your shortcut key and then start to type. This is faster than typing a paragraph then trying to find the correct style in the word control ribbon. For example, to make something a “Heading 1”, you can simply hit ALT+1 and then start typing.

Setting up keyboard shortcuts for word styles.

1. Right click on the Style entry for Heading 1 (or any other style) in the top ribbon of Word and select Modify Style from the menu that appears
   
2. The window that appears next allows you to customize the appearance and properties of all the Heading 1’s across your entire document (which can be very useful). To assign a keyboard shortcut, select Shortcut key from the drop down list in the bottom left corner.
   
3. Next, press the shortcut keys you would like to use (in our case we assigned Alt+1). If the combination of keys you’ve selected is available and not currently assigned to another program or shortcut, Unassigned will appear.
4. Click Assign.
   
5. Rinse and repeat for the other styles you’d like easy access to. Each time you start Word these will be available.

Give gizmo a call if you need a hand setting up your shortcuts – a one on one gizmo Show Me service will make you an Office Pro in no time.