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Keyboard shortcuts have changed in Word for Mac

Anonymous
2024-01-03T23:25:02+00:00

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Hello, I cannot find this menu on a Mac. There is a similar menu, but it does not have the customize keyboards button. I absolutely cannot write without quickly typing subscripts and superscripts; I am an isotope chemist and I need to write a lot of isotopes and chemical formulas in documents. My muscle memory has been trained by decades of work to do this quickly and efficiently using the same keyboard commands! I need to change the settings back to the way they used to be if I want to be able to do my job. It's unbelievable that this would have been changed and that I now have to spend hours figuring out how to fix what was never broken in the first place!!

Microsoft 365 and Office | Word | For home | MacOS

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  1. Bob Jones AKA CyberTaz MVP 434.8K Reputation points
    2024-01-04T01:20:38+00:00

    I have no idea which menu you cannot find but the Customize Keyboard command is listed at the bottom of the Tools menu... assuming you're using the desktop software.

    If using the Word Online web app keyboard customization is literally non-existent, but the conventional shortcuts work as expected:

    • Subscript - Shift+command+➖
    • Superscript - Shift+Command+＝

    It's also possible that you may be accustomed to using a Windows PC. In that case the commands are somewhat different:

    • Subscript - Control+＝
    • Superscript - Control+Shift+✚

    If you continue to have a problem please provide an explicit description of what you need. Also, include the specific Version Number of your Office software & edition of macOS.

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  1. Bob Jones AKA CyberTaz MVP 434.8K Reputation points
    2024-01-04T03:52:05+00:00

    Microsoft has to comply with Apple Guidelines if they intend to be supported on Apple devices. Over the last decade Apple has commandeered quite a few keyboard shortcuts in the name of standardization. In some cases it has handcuffed Microsoft's efforts to improve Win/Mac parity.

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  2. Anonymous
    2024-01-04T01:40:10+00:00

    Thanks!! Yeah, I was initially searching in Preferences, since that was more similar to location in the the Windows menus. The window for the Ribbon & Toolbar settings looks almost identical to the Windows menu, except the 'customize keyboard' button is missing from the bottom of the window.

    Subscript and superscript used to be command-minus and command-plus (command-shift-equals) on a Mac, so basically the same as Windows except command instead of control. This update seems to have changed the subscript command to command-shift-minus, which doesn't make as much character sense, and I'll either have to change it (and possibly conflict with something else) or retrain my hands after decades of doing it the old way. Command-minus now seems to zoom in or out, similar to the changes in the Windows versions that others have described.

    Anyway, thanks for helping me figure out where this was and what was actually changed!

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