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: Speeding Up Cursor Movement.

Speeding Up Cursor Movement

Written by Allen Wyatt (last updated November 9, 2018)
This tip applies to Word 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003


Do you ever become impatient when using the cursor control keys (the arrows) to scroll through text in your document? Depending on your system settings, it can be a painfully slow process to move through a document a single character at a time.

To speed things up considerably, just hold down the Ctrl key and press either the left or right arrow keys. This causes the insertion point to jump from word to word, rather than character to character. The increase in speed is dramatic.

WordTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Word training. (Microsoft Word is the most popular word processing software in the world.) This tip (665) 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: Speeding Up Cursor Movement.

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. ...

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