TR Dojo: Word keyboard shortcuts for quickly formatting documents

Bill Detwiler: Whether you're working on product documentation, service level agreements, or your resume properly formatting your documents is essential.

I'm Bill Detwiler, and during this episode of TR Dojo, I'll show you five Word keyboard shortcuts that will help you format your docs in a hurry.

Even if you’re a diehard mouse user, keyboard shortcuts can save you time and effort — especially when it comes to formatting Word documents.

TechRepublic Senior Editor and Word expert Jody Gilbert put together a list of five ways you can quickly format documents with shortcuts. Just remember that I'll be using Word 2010 to demonstrate they shortcuts.

First on her list is applying styles:

Now, not everyone uses styles, which is really too bad — styles are almost always more efficient than manual formatting.

But even if you’re style-shy, you’ll appreciate the instant formatting provided by these little shortcuts.

They work on the current paragraph or multiple selected paragraphs:

Ctrl + Shift + N applies the Normal style.

Ctrl + Shift + L applies the List Bullet style.

Ctrl + Alt +1 applies the Heading 1 style.

Ctrl + Alt +2 applies the Heading 2 style.

Ctrl + Alt +3 applies the Heading 3 style.

Ctrl + Shift + S will open the Apply Styles dialog box, where you can choose any style available to the document.

Tip number two: Adjusting the font size

Word offers two types of size adjustment, although it’s a subtle distinction:

Ctrl + ] (right bracket) increases the size of selected text by 1 point.

Ctrl + [ (left bracket) decreases the size of selected text by 1 point.

Ctrl + Shift + > (greater than) increases the selected text to the next largest installed point size.

Ctrl + Shift + < (less than) decreases the selected text to the next smallest installed point size.

This next set of shortcuts is really handy if you’re trying to add white space and/or improve readability in a document but you don’t have a lot of time to spend tweaking the layout and design.

Ctrl + 0 (zero) applies or removes 12 points of space above the current paragraph.

Ctrl + 5 applies 1.5 line spacing to the current paragraph.

Ctrl + 2 double-spaces the lines in the current paragraph.

If you're looking for a quick way to transfer formatting without using the format painter, you'll love these next two shortcuts.

And, they offer something Format Painter doesn’t: They remember the formatting you copied until the end of your Word session.

Ctrl + Shift + C copies the formatting of selected text.

Ctrl + Shift + V applies the copied formatting to a new selection.

If you often work with documents created by other people, you’ve probably encountered more than your share of extraneous formatting. The last pair of keyboard shortcuts on Jody's can help you quickly eliminate all that annoying manual formatting and get back to the document's underlying styles:

Ctrl + Spacebar removes character formatting, leaving just the formatting of the default character style.

Ctrl + Q removes paragraph formatting, leaving just the formatting of the paragraph style applied to the selected paragraph(s).

Well that does it for this edition of TR Dojo. For more keyboard shortcuts and Office tips and tricks, check out TechRepublic's 10 Things and Microsoft Office blogs. I'll link to both from the TR Dojo blog.

And as always, for more teachings on YOUR path to becoming an IT Ninja, visit trdojo.techrepublic.com, sign-up for our newsletter, or follow me on Twitter.

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