Ctrl+N keyboard shortcut for new blank file - cannot save changed keyboard shortcut. Gives Bold!

It appears that something is preventing saving your Normal template.

It might be a corporate IT department or it might be an Add-In.

Workaround:

An alternative, that you should not need, is to save them in a separate Global template.

• Global Template (https://www.addbalance.com/usersguide/templates.htm#Global)
• Assigning Keyboard Shortcuts in Microsoft Word 2007-2024 (365)

Otherwise, if you are allowed to use Macros, I can give you a macro that you can use to force a save of your Normal template.

Note that I split this into its own question to focus on your problem.

Did you make sure to save the keyboard customizations to the Normal template?

In File Explorer, check the date & time stamp of your Normal template. Maybe you are being prevented from saving changes to the template for some reason.

By default, you will find Normal.dotm in the user templates folder. You can open the correct folder from the Run dialog box (Windows logo key + R). Type %Appdata%\Microsoft\Templates and press Enter (or click the OK button).

I did both: reassigned Ctrl+N to open new document and Ctrl+B to bold. And it worked. For a day. Today I switch on only to find out that everything is again "back to normal" - meaning as MS want it, not as I assigned it.

Ctrl+N works as bold again and so on. I obviously can't deal with Customize Keyboard on a daily basis, nor play that game with MS if they are going to delete and derogate my assignments every next day!

You may also need to remove the assignment of Ctrl+N to Bold.

Hi!

Mine also shows Ctrl+N as "Current keys" but when pressed in a Word document the combination doesn't open a new document as before but switches on bold (which used to be Ctrl+B but now is not).

In the Customize Keyboard dialog box, try reassigning the shortcut. This can be done even if the key assignment looks correct.