Writing – MS Word 2003 – Create your own custom keyboard shortcuts

MS Word comes with many standard and very useful keyboard shortcuts like CTRL+C to copy selected text, CTRL+X to cut it and CTRL+V to paste it.

But many other useful functions do not have a keyboard shortcut. For example, wouldn’t it be great if there was a simple keyboard shortcut to automatically adjust the width of a table column to accommodate cell text? Why should you use the Table menu if you can achieve the same thing with just a few keystrokes and no mouse touch?

Follow these steps:

1. Select Tools > Customize from the main menu to display the Customize dialog.

2. On the Commands tab, click the Keyboard button to display the Customize Keyboard dialog.

3. Select a Category and then Order of your choice. MS Word will display the existing hotkey combination (if applicable) in the Current Keys field. If the field is blank, it means that there is no preset hot key for that specific function. MS Word will display a description of the command’s function in the Description field below.

4. Move the cursor to Press New Shortcut Key, and then simply press the keys you’d like to use as a shortcut for that specific function. For example, if you select the “BottomAlign” Command from the “Table” Category and then fill in the Press New Shortcut Key field with CTRL+Q, then each time you press those keys, Word will bottom align the contents of one cell of the board. .

NOTE: You must first press the CTRL key, or the ALT key, or BOTH, then followed by ONE alphanumeric key.

Decide which template you would like to save your new shortcut to: regular template or your current document.

Then click the Assign button, and voila! Now, whenever you want to perform that complicated task, all you need to do is press two keys on your keyboard. Isn’t that cool?

CAUTION: When assigning keystrokes for different commands, be sure not to assign popular shortcuts to new features. If, for example, you assign CTRL+A (a popular shortcut for select all) to center table cells, that shortcut will no longer be available. By using never-used key combinations, you can avoid that problem.