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.
- Backup the Registry, just in case.
- Open Command Prompt (CMD) as administrator.
- 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