Microsoft 365 and Office | Word | For home | Windows
A family of Microsoft word processing software products for creating web, email, and print documents.
(Ctrl + Space) Does Not Work as Expected for Microsoft 365 Word desktop
![](data:image/svg+xml, %3Csvg xmlns='http://www.w3.org/2000/svg' height='64' class='font-weight-bold' style='font: 600 30.11764705882353px "SegoeUI", Arial' width='64'%3E%3Ccircle fill='hsl(128, 8%, 22%)' cx='32' cy='32' r='32' /%3E%3Ctext x='50%25' y='55%25' dominant-baseline='middle' text-anchor='middle' fill='%23FFF' %3EA%3C/text%3E%3C/svg%3E)
Anonymous
In Microsoft 365 Word desktop, after Selecting All, (Ctrl + Space) is supposed to clear the direct formatted characters and leave the character styles like "Strong" untouched. But that is not what appears to happen.
Microsoft® Word for Microsoft 365 MSO (Version 2302 Build 16.0.16130.20186) 64-bit
Windows 11 Pro, Version 22H2, OS build 22621.1265
Download the following zip file:
http://sccrose.org/MicrosoftAnswers/CtrlSpacebar.zip
Unzip it.
Open "Ctrl + Spacebar.docx"
Open the Styles panel using (Alt + Ctrl + Shift + S)
If you Select All, and then (Ctrl + Space),
both the DirectFormatting (i.e., Bold which is direct formatting) and character style "Strong" are cleared.
It should only clear the DirectFormatting (i.e., Bold).
It should not clear the character style "Strong".
Unclear why (Ctrl + Space) is not working as expected.
Thank you for your feedback.
DirectFormatting (i.e., Bold which is direct formatting)
Before - Ctrl + Spacebar
After - Select All, Ctrl + Spacebar
Microsoft 365 and Office | Word | For home | Windows
Locked Question. This question was migrated from the Microsoft Support Community. You can vote on whether it's helpful, but you can't add comments or replies or follow the question.