Change Keyboard Shortcuts in Word 2013

Microsoft Word 2013 introduces a totally new feature; a way to adjust hotkeys. Word has more than a thousand controls but does not have a hotkey for every control because it is difficult to remember all the hotkeys. Only a few controls have predefined hotkeys whereas you can customize the predefined hotkeys and add your own hotkeys. Customizing the hotkeys in Word however does not affect the other applications in the Office suite.

To customize the shortcut key in Word 2013 use the following procedure.

Step 1

First of all open a Word document and click on the "File" tab.

Step 2

Choose "Option" from the backstage view.

Step 3

Now the "Word Options" window will be opened where we select the "Customize Ribbon" button.

Step 4

Now click on the "Customize" button at the bottom adjacent to the "keyboard shortcuts" label.

Step 5

The "Customize Keyboard" window opens where we select a category, and then browse through the commands. You will see the majority of the commands in Word 2013 don't have any keyboard shortcut assigned.

If a command does have a hotkey, it will be shown under "Current Keys".

Step 6

To add a new shortcut key, select the command that you like to add a shortcut key for and put your mouse pointer within the empty white box under the "Press new shortcut key" label and press the combination of keyboard that you would like to set as the shortcut key. You can also press multiple combinations of keys to set multiple hotkeys for each command.

After assigning the combination of keys, finally click on the "Assign" button to save the shortcut key.

Step 7

If you assign a shortcut key that is already used by a different command then you will see the name of the attached command listed after the "Currently assigned to" label.

Note: You cannot assign the same shortcut key to more than one command.

Step 8

If you feel that you have done something wrong while assigning the shortcut key then click on the "reset" button to remove the assigned shortcuts and restore the default shortcut key.

Step 9

The new shortcut keys will appear with the tool tip function just like the original shortcut keys. if you forget the assigned shortcut key then hover your mouse over the command to see the shortcut key.