We like keyboard shortcuts as they will help speed up your work habits if you can learn some of them. We’ve featured Microsoft Teams keyboard shortcuts, Microsoft Word keyboard shortcuts, Windows Key shortcuts, handy run commands, Outlook shortcuts, Excel keyboard shortcuts, ways to paste plain text, and even Foreign Character shortcuts that will help you speed up your productivity if you can put them into daily use.
Sometimes, however, there are some keyboard shortcuts that make you go “Huh?” Like, did you know Shift+Ctrl+Alt+Win+L Opens the LinkedIn website on Windows (Yes, it works, try it)? We know you’re never going to remember that button mash, but where did that shortcut come from in the first place? If you have a Microsoft-brand keyboard with an “Office” key on it, press “Office+L” and it will do the same thing. The Office key that is on some Microsoft keyboards maps to Shift+Ctrl+Alt+Windows. From what we can tell, the only currently available Microsoft keyboards that have an Office key on it are the following (but please tell us if we’re wrong):
And that’s it. If you happen to have one of those keyboards, you’ll get access to the following keyboard shortcuts:
- Office Key + W: Opens Word
- Office Key + P: Opens PowerPoint
- Office Key + X: Opens Excel
- Office Key + O: Opens Outlook
- Office Key + T: Opens Teams
- Office Key + D: Opens OneDrive in File Explorer
- Office Key + N: Opens OneNote
- Office Key + L: Opens LinkedIn, in your default browser (LinkedIn is owned by Microsoft, hence the shortcut).
- Office Key + Y: Opens Yammer
So basically, a quick way to open various Office apps.
Unfortunately, there is no easy way to disable the Office keyboard shortcuts, should you want that key back for other uses. There are ways to do it, but they get ugly so your best bet would be to get a keyboard that doesn’t have that key if you’re accidentally launching stuff you don’t need or want to.