Shortcuts for Basic Style Formatting

All too often people learning to use styles forget themselves and start applying explicit formatting over the top of style-formatted text. If you have done this or inherited someone else's document of mixed parentage, getting the formatting back to pure styles can be slow work unless you know some shortcuts. The ones presented in this tip work in all versions of Word.

First, you can select the text and use the shortcut Ctrl+Shift+Z to remove all explicit character formatting. The result will be pure styles, without any explicit character formatting. (Pressing Ctrl+Shift+Z initiates the ResetChar command within Word; it is the same as pressing Ctrl+Spacebar.)

You can also use Ctrl+Q to remove any explicit paragraph formatting and return a paragraph to its style-defined defaults. For instance, Ctrl+Q will remove any explicit indents, tabs, and line spacing.

Finally, if you want to quickly apply the Normal style to a selection of text, you can press Ctrl+Shift+N.