There was a sudden disappearance of the Ctrl + Shift + V Paste Special shortcut in Outlook classic for Windows. We explain what caused the issue, when Microsoft will finally roll out a fix, and why the delay happened, so you can get back to efficient email editing without the hassle.
Ctrl + Shift + V is a Paste Special shortcut in Word which inserts just the text without formatting “plain text”. It was added to Word for Windows and Mac, resulting in more changes to the keyboard shortcuts.
Outlook classic for Windows uses Word as the email editor so changes to Word can flow through to Outlook. Unfortunately, no-one at Microsoft seems to have told the Outlook team about the shortcut change or no-one was listening.
The result is that Ctrl + Shift + V to Paste Special in Outlook classic stopped working.
That happened earlier this year and only now is Microsoft rolling out a fix in Microsoft 365 for Windows.
- Beta Channel v2505 build 18826.15030
- Current Channel Preview v2506 build 18925.20000
- Current Channel v2506 build 18925.20000
Outlook (new) for Windows has the Ctrl + Shift + V shortcut for pasting text only.
Why the delay?
Why was there a delay fixing the Outlook shortcut bug? Especially since the change was known inside Microsoft for many months, the Outlook team would have known and made changes before public release.
Probably the Outlook (classic) team is under-resourced as Microsoft prefers their ‘new’ Outlook instead. It’s also another example of corporate passive aggressive behavior by slowing down anything with Outlook classic in the hope that people will move to new Outlook, if only out of frustration.
Outlook classic dropped from Microsoft 365
