MS Word Shortcuts | Useful & Time-Saving for Mooters

Published on : July 11, 2019

“Send it out fast! There’s only 1 minute left for the memorial submission.”

– Every mooter, at least once in his/ her mooting lifetime

All of us have, at some point, almost missed memorial submission deadlines (and some of us have actually missed them!). From my own experience we can tell you that when we used to start our preparations for the oral rounds (after the memorial submissions), we always used to find some avoidable mistakes (formatting, editing and drafting) in our memorials. (Read: How to draft a Moot Court Memorial?) At that point, the only thought in our head was – only if we had some more time…

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So, how to secure that extra time? While it’s difficult to come up with a bulletproof step plan on how to manage your time efficiently, but one of the things which really helped me (not only for memorial making process but also for making college projects, writing formal e-mails, making my CV, while interning and later on working in a law firm) was to be aware and use the hidden gems of MS Word – Shortcuts! The possibilities of using shortcuts on MS Word are endless and once you know how to use them, you will get hooked and we guarantee it will help you save some great deal of time and make the whole memorial making process super-efficient!

Important Notes

For all of you passionate mooters, Memo Pundits has prepared a list of useful MS Word shortcuts. Although you would find a lot of blog posts on the internet setting out MS Word keyboard shortcuts but in this blog post, we have focused only on the most relevant shortcuts for mooters (and also generally for law students). Before you jump on to the table below, please go through the following 3 notes:

The best way to remember and use these MS Word shortcuts like a pro is – (a) pick the most useful ones for your purpose (ignore the ones you already know), (b) try the shortcuts right away (only practice is your savior!), and (c) note them somewhere where you can keep going back – like on a Post-it or as a print of the table below on your desk, or as a note saved on your desktop.
Remember that some of these shortcuts may not work on your MS Word due to difference in MS Word versions – you can reach out to us in the comment section below in case you face such a problem and we will personally help you find the right shortcut for you.
My personal favorite is Shortcut no. 18:

S. No.	Action	For Windows	For Mac
*BASIC*
1.	Cut, Copy, Paste, Undo and Redo	Ctrl+X, Ctrl+C, Ctrl+V, Ctrl+Z and Ctrl+Y	Cmd+X, Cmd+C, Cmd+V, Cmd+Z and Cmd+Y
2.	Bold, Underline and Italics	Ctrl+B, Ctrl+U and Ctrl+I	Cmd+B, Cmd+U and Cmd+I
3.	Save (I urge you to keep saving your document at regular intervals because in kalyug you just cannot trust MS Word to not crash.)	Ctrl+S	Cmd+S and Cmd+Shift+S (Save as)
4.	Left Align, Center Align and Justify	Ctrl+L, Ctrl+E and Ctrl+J	Cmd+L, Cmd+E and Cmd+J
5.	Find	Ctrl+F	Cmd+F
6.	Insert Citation	Ctrl+Alt+F	Cmd+Opt+F
7.	Open a new document	Ctrl+N	Cmd+N
8.	Close the active document	Ctrl+W	Cmd+W
9.	Open an existing document from your computer	Ctrl+O	Cmd+O
10.	Insert Hyperlink (Select the text you want to hyperlink) – Example	Ctrl+K	Cmd+K
11.	Small Caps (Select the text you want to convert to small caps) – Example	Ctrl+Shift+K	Cmd+Shift+K
12.	All Caps (Select the text you want to convert to all caps) – Example	Ctrl+Shift+A	Cmd+Shift+A
13.	Page break (Creates an empty space till the end of the active page and any new text starts from the next page)	Ctrl+Enter	Cmd+Enter
14.	Delete word(s) (useful if you want to delete full sentences)	Ctrl+Backspace	Cmd+Delete
15.	Select word(s) (useful if you want to select full sentences without using the mouse)	Ctrl+Shift+Left/Right arrow key	Cmd+Shift+Left/Right arrow key
16.	Highlight/ Unhighlight text (Remember that this shortcut will follow the color of highlight chosen on the Word toolbar)	Ctrl+Alt+H	Cmd+Alt+H
*ADVANCED*
17.	Change text case – Example –UPPERCASE, Lowercase or Mixed Case	Shift+F3	Shift+F3 or Shift+fn+F3
18.	Copy style and Paste formatting / style (useful when you copy and paste text from other documents which is differently formatted)	Ctrl+shift+C and Ctrl+shift+V	Cmd+shift+C and Cmd+shift+V
19.	Insert Table	Alt>N>T>V (to be pressed one by one and not together)	N/A
20.	Insert Table of Contents	Alt>S>T>I (to be pressed one by one and not together)	N/A
21.	Format Font (advanced) – You can choose from a variety of options – Example, Example, Example, Example, ^Example, _Example, Example, Example, Example	Ctrl+Shift+F or Ctrl+D	Cmd+D
22.	Find and replace word(s)	Ctrl+H	Cmd+Shift+H
23.	Open thesaurus (Select the word you want to see synonyms of)	Shift+F7	Shift+fn+F7
24.	Go to page	F5 or fn+F5	Cmd+Opt+G
25.	Run a spell check	F7 or fn+F7	Option+fn+F7
26.	Increase / Decrease Font Size	Increase: Ctrl+Shift+> Decrease: Ctrl+Shift+<	Increase: Cmd+[ Decrease: Cmd+]
27.	Show / Hide ruler	Alt>V>L	N/A
28.	Change line spacing	Single spacing: Ctrl+1 Double spacing: Ctrl+2 1.5 spacing: Ctrl+5	Single spacing: Cmd+1 Double spacing: Cmd+2 1.5 spacing: Cmd+5
29.	Convert to bullet list	Ctrl+Shift+L	Cmd+Shift+L
30.	Check word count	Ctrl+Shift+G	N/A
31.	Turn “Track Changes” on / off	Ctrl+Shift+E	Cmd+Shift+E