

#KEYBOARD SHORTCUTS FOR WORD ON MAC HOW TO#
And I had no idea how to do it through System Preferences, because it’s not really a menu command. For years, I really missed an MS Word for Windows shortcut ^⌥S which would bring my cursor directly to the style selection window and let me just type the name of the style I need. Normally I would take my mouse, go to the style selection window and scroll through dozens of styles to find the one I need. The default word template does not have keyboard shortcuts for such styles (although it does for more frequently used Normal and Heading 1-3). Unfortunately, this method has not been working perfectly for me because (a) one needs to type menu commands exactly as they appear in MS Word, even a smallest typo will lead to malfunction and (b) some of the things I want shortcuts for are not menu commands.įor example, I often want to change the style of a particular paragraph to one of the standard styles such as Title or Footnote Text.

One way to do it is through System Preferences. The Keyboard Shortcuts tab in the Keyboard preference pane allows you to define shortcuts for performing menu commands from specific apps, including MS Word (see example in the screenshot below).

Fortunately, there is a way to define keyboard shortcuts for most frequent tasks. Keyboard shortcuts are a combination of keys that provide quick access to a particular function within a computer. Some of those are listed by Microsoft, but many of my favorite commands are not in this list. Unfortunately, keyboard shortcuts in Word on Mac are significantly different from those in other Mac apps and in Word for Windows. If you have to edit texts in MS Word you might as well do it smoothly and efficiently, save time and preserve focus by replacing mouse movements with keyboard shortcuts. Despite alternatives to Microsoft Word it is not possible to completely avoid using it in academic work on a Mac.
