Word 2021 For Dummies Cheat Sheet

Get to know the Word 2021 screen

Behold Word’s Office 2021 Edition’s screen. You see the promise of a new document and a bewildering number of buttons and gizmos. Here are the important elements you’ll most likely need to remember:

The Word 2021 ribbon

The Microsoft Word 2021 Ribbon presents tabs you can click to reveal groups of helpful icons. These icons represent command buttons, input boxes, and menus that are helpful when navigating a Word document.

Word 2021 keyboard command roundup

The Office 2021 Edition of Word has many keyboard commands to offer you. Whether you use a computer with a honkin’ 105-key keyboard or a tablet with no keyboard, word processing remains a keyboard-bound activity.

The following tables show how to access the commands and functions in Word’s Office 2021 edition.

Here are all the options you can utilize for cursor movement:

Here are some basic editing commands that are always helpful when word processing:

Check out these useful commands when you need to do some text formatting:

Here are some commands that will help simplify paragraph formatting:

And, just for fun, here are some popular Word keyboard shortcuts:

Haven’t found what you’re looking for? Check out these uncommon (but useful) Word keyboard shortcuts:

Word 2021's special-character keyboard shortcuts

Some key combinations insert characters into a Word 2021 document. If you find these characters useful in your day-to-day typing duties, you may want to consider using their keyboard shortcuts:

Word 2021 tricks to remember

Here’s a short list of the most helpful Word Office 2021 edition tricks that may come in handy for your word processing needs. Keep these suggestions in mind when you compose a new document:

• Press Ctrl+Enter to start a new page. This key combination inserts a hard page break, which forces a new page automatically.
• Press Shift+Enter to insert a soft return. This keypress is useful for breaking a line of text, such as in a document title or an address.
• Use tabs to line up the text. Never use spaces for this task. One tab is all you need. If you’re inserting more than one tab, you need to reset the tab stops.
• Always use one tab between columns to line them up. Doing so makes editing the information easier.
• If you need to change the page formatting in the middle of a document, start a new section. Sections allow you to use multiple page-format attributes in a single document.
• Save your styles in a template! That way, you can use them for documents you create without having to rebuild all your styles over and over again.