Quickly Customizing the Keyboard

Summary: Want a quick way to change the shortcut key associated with a tool available on a ribbon, toolbar, or menu? Here's one esoteric shortcut that will help in that regard (and it displays a cool cloverleaf mouse pointer). (This tip works with Microsoft Word 97, Word 2000, Word 2002, Word 2003, and Word 2007.)

If you absolutely love to customize Word, then you will love this tip. You already know that it can be a pain to customize some features of Word. For instance, if you want to customize the keyboard so you can pull up different features already available from menus or toolbars. Try this, instead:

Press Ctrl+Alt and then press the plus key on the numeric keypad. Word changes the mouse pointer so it looks like a small cloverleaf.
Click on any ribbon, toolbar, or menu item.

At this point Word displays the Customize Keyboard dialog box. You are probably already familiar with this dialog box. The difference is that the dialog box already contains the information relating to the tool or menu item on which you clicked. Thus, you can very easily modify the keyboard shortcut keys for that particular item. When you are done, click on Close to dismiss the dialog box.

Tip #660 applies to Microsoft Word versions: 97 | 2000 | 2002 | 2003 | 2007

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