Please Note: This article is written for users of the following Microsoft Word versions: 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003. If you are using a later version (Word 2007 or later), this tip may not work for you. For a version of this tip written specifically for later versions of Word, click here: Resetting All Shortcut Keys.

Resetting All Shortcut Keys

Written by Allen Wyatt (last updated January 11, 2020)
This tip applies to Word 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003

Word allows you to customize its interface to your heart's content. One of the things you can customize is the assignment of shortcut keys. Word comes with a pre-defined set of shortcut key assignments that you can use to accomplish specific tasks or to apply different editing and formatting features. You can customize these shortcut keys, as desired.

At some point you may want to reset the formatting of your shortcut keys. To do this, follow these steps:

Choose Customize from the Tools menu. Word displays the Customize dialog box.
Click on the Keyboard button. Word displays the Customize Keyboard dialog box. (See Figure 1.)

Figure 1. The Customize Keyboard dialog box.

Click on the Reset All button. Word displays a dialog box asking if you want to remove all your shortcut key definitions.
Click on Yes. Word removes all the user-defined shortcut keys, returning the shortcut keys to their default condition.
Click on OK to dismiss the Customize Keyboard dialog box.
Click on OK to dismiss the Customize dialog box.

WordTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Word training. (Microsoft Word is the most popular word processing software in the world.) This tip (658) applies to Microsoft Word 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003. You can find a version of this tip for the ribbon interface of Word (Word 2007 and later) here: Resetting All Shortcut Keys.

Author Bio

Allen Wyatt

With more than 50 non-fiction books and numerous magazine articles to his credit, Allen Wyatt is an internationally recognized author. He is president of Sharon Parq Associates, a computer and publishing services company. Learn more about Allen...

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