We like keyboard shortcuts. In the past we’ve featured Microsoft Teams keyboard shortcuts, Microsoft Word keyboard shortcuts, Windows Key shortcuts, handy run commands, Outlook shortcuts, Excel keyboard shortcuts, plain text paste shortcuts and even Foreign Character shortcuts. This month, we have some shortcuts that are changing soon in Microsoft Word that will be better for all involved in the long run as it makes it more consistent with shortcuts used in the rest of Windows.

Paste As Plain Text
Previously you had to either right-click, you a PowerToy (which recently added a plain text paste feature) or press Ctrl-Alt-V to get the option for a plain text paste in Microsoft Word instead of using the Ctrl-Shift-V shortcut that works in many other programs. Microsoft is redoing some of the shortcuts in Word so that Ctrl-Shift-V will now paste unformatted text.

If you use the format painter features in Word, this may affect your workflow, too, as this was previously a shortcut associated with that feature. So some other shortcuts in Word have changed:

• Paste Text Only: Ctrl + Shift + V
• Copy Format Painter: Ctrl + Alt + C
• Paste Format Painter: Ctrl + Alt + V
• Paste Special: Alt + H + V + S
• Copyright Symbol: ( + C + ) or Insert > Ω Symbol > ©

If you need to revert back to the old shortcuts, you can find out how to do that on Microsoft’s site.

New Zoom Shortcuts
In most programs in Windows, Ctrl + + or Ctrl + – will zoom in and out on a document, but Word used those for subscript text or optional hyphens (respectively). Microsoft will be changing those shortcuts to make things more consistent.

Here are the shortcuts that are being introduced:

• Use Ctrl +– to zoom out
• Use Ctrl ++ to zoom in
• Use Ctrl +0 to return back to 100% zoom
• Use Ctrl +Scroll to zoom in and out

Here are the other shortcuts that are changing because of this:

• Subscript: Ctrl + Shift + –
• Optional Hyphen: Insert -> Symbol -> Special Characters
• Nonbreaking Hyphen: Insert -> Symbol -> Special Characters
• Add or remove one line space preceding a paragraph: Line and Paragraph Spacing Menu

If you need to change the shortcuts back to their original, see how to do so at this Microsoft article.

Images courtesy of Microsoft.