December 13, 2012

Word for Mac 2011 Keyboard Navigation Shortcuts

One of my favorite not-well-known features of Mac is that standard emacs CTRL keyboard shortcuts are available system wide to move the cursor and do basic editing WITHOUT moving ones hands from the home position. This is incredibly valuable to touch typists (such as myself). This works in all Apple products (TextEdit, Terminal, Pages, Web browsers, etc.)

But it doesn't work in Microsoft Word for Mac. Fortunately, Word for Mac offers a built-in tool for customizing the keyboard that easily lets you add this feature back in.  Just follow this simple recipe:


Select the menu Tools->Customize Keyboard…

In Categories, select All Commands

Then for each of the following, click in Press new keyboard shortcut and enter the keyboard shortcut, and select the command from the "Commands" window and press Assign.

Ctrl-a     StartOfLine
Ctrl-e     EndOfLine
Ctrl-b     CharLeft
Ctrl-f     CharRight
Ctrl-p     LineUp
Ctrl-n     LineDown
Ctrl-d     EditClear
Cmd-=   ViewZoomIn
Cmd--    ViewZoomOut

This is what it looks like after I mapped the first key:


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