How to disable the Windows shortcut key to Office apps

You can disable the “Hyper” “Office” key or Ctrl+Alt+Shift+Win shortcuts to open Microsoft 365 and Office apps.

We’ve told you about the Office Keyboard Shortcuts in Windows 11 and 10 which start by pressing Ctrl+Alt+Shift+Win together.

That clumsy four-finger shortcut is an alternative to the Office key which Microsoft tried to introduce back in 2019 to almost complete apathy.   The Office key was a version of the Hyper key on the 1978 Space-cadet keyboard .

Even though the Office / Hyper key is mostly forgotten, the associated shortcut is not and it’s still in Windows.  Most people can ignore the missing key or the key combination.

But for anyone with a Hyper or Office key, the in-built Windows shortcut can be a nuisance. 

Or perhaps you’d like to use the Ctrl+Alt+Shift+Win … combination for some other purpose? To do that, you first have to force Windows to ignore the keys.

Disable Office / Hyper key

There’s a way to disable Hyper/Office key or the key-combo entirely or stop Windows ‘seeing’ it so the key can be remapped to some other action.

  1. Backup the Registry, just in case.
  2. Open Command Prompt (CMD) as administrator.
  3. Run this command:

REG ADD HKCU\Software\Classes\ms-officeapp\Shell\Open\Coflttnand /t REG_SZ /d rundll32

That adds a registry entry to disable the Office/Hyper key.

Source: Microsoft forum

Discover Office Keyboard Shortcuts in Windows 11 and 10