In earlier posts, we covered some Essential Keyboard Shortcuts (and I hope none of you fell asleep when reading that one) as well as More Essential Keyboard Shortcuts, but now we’re going to continue with some more involved ones. As before we’ll start off with how to move around in Word.
- Down one screen (scrolling) – Page Down
- Up one screen (scrolling) – Page Up
- Top of current window – Ctrl+Alt+Page Up
- Bottom of current window – Ctrl+Alt+Page Down
- Go to last edit location after opening – Shift+F5
- Repeat Find or Go To action – Shift+F4
- Top of next page (scrolling—not after find) – Ctrl+Page Down
- Top of previous page (scrolling—not after find) – Ctrl+Page Up
As previously, you can hold Shift as you do the above moves to select the text, but here are a few more ways to select:
- Select all text – Ctrl+A
- Enter regular Selection mode – F8
- Extend Selection mode – F8 (1 additional time word, 2 sentence, 3 paragraph, 4 document)
- Reduce Selection mode – Shift+F8
- Exit Selection mode – Esc
- Enter Column Selection mode – Ctrl+Shift+F8
The F8 Selection mode may need a bit of discussion here. As it seems to be the only real way to select a sentence in the middle of a pgph, it can be handy for that, but the Column Selection mode is rather strange. You may find that you will never have a need to select text vertically when your lines of text run horizontally, but it could be fun to play with. If you find a good use for it, please let us know. Thanks!
Here’s a few more ways to cut and move text around…this time we will explain how the Spike works, too, so read carefully.
- Copy format only – Ctrl+Shift+C
- Paste copied format only – Ctrl+Shift+V
- Copy text – Shift+F2 (use Enter to paste in new location)
- Cut text – F2 (use Enter to paste in new location)
The Spike
- Cut additional text onto Spike – Ctrl+F3
- Copy additional text onto Spike – Ctrl+F3, Ctrl-Z
- Paste all copied text from Spike (and clear Spike) – Ctrl+Shift+F3
- Paste all copied text from Spike (and keep in Spike) – “spike” Enter
Copying just the format of one section to paste on another could be helpful, and the F2 cut-n-paste takes fewer keystrokes, but the Spike…ah, the Spike…that is a different beast. What it allows you to do is consolidate a bunch of different parts together in one place. (Probably more useful for non-fiction, but who knows?)
When you select text and hit Ctrl+F3, it gets added to the Spike. You can do that multiple times, collecting together info from various locations throughout your document. When you’ve collected them all up, you then paste all of them in at one time! That could allow you to take the first (intro) pgph from each section, and put them all together into a summary…even into a new document.