Increase or decrease font size in Word using keyboard shortcuts

You want to increase or decrease the size of the font in Word from, say, 10 to 12. What do you do? Reach over for the mouse and select a new font size from the drop-down menu? You should know better by now!

Highlight the text whose font size you want to increase/decrease (perhaps using some of the text highlighting tips I talked about previously!) and press the key combination

CTRL + SHIFT + > to increase font size by 1 point
CTRL + SHIFT + < to decrease font size by 1 point
(the < and > symbols MAY be on different keys depending on your keyboard layout - they are the two keys to the right of the M key)

On some versions of Word you can also use CTRL+ [ and ], which is even simpler!

This is such a simpler way of changing the font size, especially by just a few points, you'll wonder why you ever used the mouse. And the other cool thing is that you can use this to increase the font size by the same increment across your whole document - even if you have different font sizes in there they will be increased by the same amount, retaining relative sizes.

Good Word habits - save save save!

Forgot to save your Word document? You could try my article on this subject, but read the following advice first, and be prepared for the worst...

A habit I strongly recommend you get into is VERY regular saving of your Word document. I don't mean every hour, or once a day, I mean every other sentence!

What? That's a bit over the top, isn't it? Well, all I can say is that it is a LONG time since I lost anything more than a few sentences of a Word document, and I am happy to keep it that way! Ever lost a few hours' (or more) work because you forgot to save? You know what a downer that can be!

Sure, Word has an Autosave/Autorecover feature, which is supposed to bail you out, but for some reason it seems always to let you down just when you need it most! It's probably wise to make sure YOU are saving your document on a VERY frequent basis.

So how do we make sure we are saving our Word Documents regularly? My advice is get to know the keyboard shortcut CTRL+S very well! As soon as you create a New Document (using CTRL+N, of course!), even before you type ANYTHING in, press CTRL+S! You will be prompted for a filename and you can save your document immediately, before you run off 20 pages and forget to save it at all. Yes, it is quite OK to save an empty document, nothing bad will happen!

Now, this is the bit you need to turn into a habit: press CTRL+S as often as you can while typing your document in! Like I say, I do it practically after every sentence, and after a while it becomes second nature, to the extent you don't realise you are doing it anymore! This will ensure a very recent version of your document is always saved, and will drastically decrease the chances of your losing a large amount of work! It only takes a second for Word to save, it will not interfere with your work, and the CTRL+S shortcut is, again, much much quicker than using the mouse and clicking the toolbar button or (heaven forbid!) the Save option from the File menu.

Happy saving!

DISCLAIMER: Look, I can't PROMISE this will absolutely protect you from losing a document, so please do not rely solely on this method. You need to take all possible precautions, it's your responsibility to save regularly, and make regular backups, and you cannot later blame me, or say "Word did it by itself"! OK?! Also, a reminder of my article Forgot to save my Word document, which might help in a pinch.

Skipping words with CTRL

This is really simple too, but it is surprising how often people are not aware that they can use CTRL to move around from word to word in Word (erm, follow that?!) Actually in more or less any Windows application.

Example - you are typing a sentence, realise you made a mistake a few words back and want to move there to correct it. Oops. I have just realized I want to go back in the last sentence and change the spelling in the word realise to the American spelling!:

You are typing a sentence, realise you made a mistake |

The cursor is after the word "mistake", so how do you get back to the word realise? You can either strain your arm reaching for the mouse, or I see a lot of people moving back with the cursor one letter at a time, which takes ages.

But hold down CTRL while using the left and right cursor keys and, hey presto, the cursor jumps a whole word at a time! Once you get used to using it, it seems silly to stab away at the cursor keys, or use the mouse and you'll wonder how you did without this simple feature!

Really obvious? Everyone knows this? Nope, if you did know this, then you're probably reading the wrong blog, but there are plenty of people out there who have just heard this for the first time! And to them I say, free your mind, and get skipping those words using CTRL!

Capitalize words and sentences EASILY

Imagine you have a sentence in Word:

Microsoft Word allows you to change a sentence into all caps with one keyboard shortcut

But you suddenly realise you need it all in caps. How are you going to get it into capitals? Surely you weren't thinking of retyping the whole thing in?!

The shortcut SHIFT+F3 is what you need. Just highlight the text (no need to use the mouse for this, but more about that another time!) and press this key combination and you will see the text cycle from the original, to this:

MICROSOFT WORD ALLOWS YOU TO CHANGE A SENTENCE INTO ALL CAPS WITH ONE KEYBOARD SHORTCUT

with one keypress!

By the way, if you press SHIFT+F3 again, you will get this:

microsoft word allows you to change a sentence into all caps with one keyboard shortcut

...and if you press it again, you get:

Microsoft Word Allows You To Change A Sentence Into All Caps With One Keyboard Shortcut

This is not that useful as we do not usually capitalize sentences like this in English, especially not the words like "a, the, to" etc. But if you wanted just to capitalize the first letters of "microsoft word" for example, this would be the ideal way to do it!

So once again, that's SHIFT+F3! Why not give it a go now?