By Doug Striker bio
We all know that using styles to format a Word document leads to more stable documents and efficient editing. But, are you efficiently applying styles?
You can use a keyboard shortcut for any style, including built-in styles such as Normal and Heading 1, 2, etc. Some styles already have their own shortcuts, but you can change them, if you want.
The most commonly used built-in styles with pre-programmed shortcuts are:
- Normal – Ctrl+Shift+N
- Heading 1 – Ctrl+Alt+1
- Heading 2 – Ctrl+Alt+2
- Heading 3 – Ctrl+Alt+3
- List Bullet – Ctrl+Shift+L
You can create a shortcut for other styles or edit the built-in ones.
1. Right-click on the Style name from the Gallery OR open the Styles list and click on the dropdown next to the style name.
2. Select Modify.
3. From the Modify Style dialog box, click on Format in the lower-left corner.
4. From the Format menu, select Shortcut key.
5. Click into the Press new shortcut key field and use the keyboard to indicate which keys you want to assign to the selected style.
6. Click on Assign.
7. Specify where you want to save your changes – generally this is in Normal.dotm.
8. If the keystroke combination you choose is already assigned to another style, that information is shown following Currently assigned to. You can choose to overwrite the current assignment. This information is merely provided to alert you that you will be changing the keyboard shortcut.
9. Click on Close to close the dialog box.
10. Click on OK to close the Modify Style dialog box.
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