Copy Paste Formatting Keyboard Shortcut No Longer Working

Question

To my team's great chagrin and frustration, Microsoft has reassigned the format copying and pasting shortcuts we used very regularly. This happened a month ago, but we all recently discussed how angry we were about losing this feature so I wanted to make sure this was raised as an issue somewhere.

We work in MS Office across the typical suite: Outlook, Word, PPT, and Excel. While Excel seems unaffected, Outlook, Word, and PowerPoint have lost this feature, which we used prolifically. We do an awful lot of hyper-time-sensitive document creation and editing, and it was a major time saver for us power users. We have had to adapt to using the mouse again, a slower tool to interact with.

RIP Ctrl-Shift-C / Ctrl-Shift-V.

I can't imagine why people would want to record a video clip of themselves with that hotkey. I am sure one could dream up another key combination for that. How about Ctrl-Shift-R, or Ctrl-Alt-R?

Please restore the original function. This change has lowered our productivity and increased our antipathy towards Microsoft's products.

Sincerely,

Answer 1

Please restore the original function. This change has lowered our productivity and increased our antipathy towards Microsoft's products.

You can restore the previous shortcuts yourself (each user will need to do this, only once).

• In Word, click File > Options > Customize Ribbon. At the bottom of the page, click the Keyboard Shortcuts: Customize button.
• In the Customize Keyboard dialog (shown in Stefan Blom's post), click the All Commands item near the bottom of the Categories list. Then scroll the Commands list and click on CopyFormat.
• Click in the "Press new shortcut key" box and press the shortcut Ctrl+Shift+C. (Do not type the characters, just press the keys.) Note the "Currently assigned to:" line below the Current keys box; it probably says "(unassigned)".
• Click the Assign button at the bottom left. That puts the shortcut into the Current keys box.
• Scroll the Commands list and click on PasteFormat.
• Use the same steps to assign the Ctrl+Shift+V shortcut to the PasteFormat command. When you press the shortcut but before you click the Assign button, the "Currently assigned to:" line says "PasteTextOnly", and clicking Assign now removes that shortcut from the PasteTextOnly command and adds it to PasteFormat instead.
• (optional) Select the PasteTextOnly command and assign a shortcut of your choice to it.
• Click the Close button.
• When you next exit from Word, you may be asked whether to save the Normal.dotm template. If so, click the Save button.

I don't know whether future updates will leave the shortcuts as you set them, or change them again.

Answer 2

The change from CTRL+ Shift + C/V to ALT + CTRL + C/V has been a real bugbear for me. I've spent a number of weeks trying to get used to the new shortcut, but I've eventually resorted to manually changing the shortcuts back to the original because it's much easier on my fingers.

Answer 3

Hi Charles! The CopyFormat still exists and we are able to change it. However, I can't find the equivalent PasteFormat, to reassign it to Ctrl + Shift + V. Does PasteFormat appear for you?

Best!

Answer 4

Which version of Word do you have? Note that you have to locate these commands in the Customize Keyboard dialog box, and to do that, you must set the category to "All Commands."

The screen shot below is from Word for Windows. Click File > Options > Customize Ribbon > Customize to display the dialog box.

Answer 5

I am another frustrated heavy keyboard shortcut user from when the mouse didn't exist yet. I'm on a .gov system of Microsoft 365 Apps for enterprise - en-us, build 16.0.18227.20222 (updated 1/14/2025).

It seems that every time (which is frequent) 365 is updated, I have to re-assign Ctrl+Shift+C and +V, which is incredibly aggravating. Ctrl+Shift+C changes back to no assignment and Ctrl+Shift+V changes to PasteTextOnly,

Ctrl+Alt+C / V is a very uncomfortable and awkward fingering combination on the keyboard that slows me down, so it is worth taking the extra time to reassign the shortcuts. Does anyone know of a way to maintain the Format Copy/Paste assignments so I don't have to reassign them every couple of weeks?

On a different tangent here, but I feel like about the same time the Format Copy/Paste keyboard shortcuts changed and reverts back to the new default, with every update, my autotext entries also are wiped out.