Transform how you format Word documents with keyboard shortcuts—going beyond the built‑in ones for Headings 1–3 by adding your own for Heading 4, 5, 6 (and beyond) that Microsoft has forgotten. With these simple tweaks, your document structuring becomes faster and more consistent.
Word’s in-built Heading styles come with some shortcut keys, but not enough for most people. For many versions, Word has default Heading styles ‘Heading 1’ ‘Heading 2’ etc. They are a quick way to structure a document.
The shortcut keys to apply these styles have existed for a long time:
Heading 1 Ctrl + Alt + 1 (Mac: Cmd + Opt + 1)
Heading 2 Ctrl + Alt + 2 (Mac: Cmd + Opt + 2)
Heading 3 Ctrl + Alt + 3 (Mac: Cmd + Opt + 3)
For some reason the Word developers believe that we only need keyboard shortcuts for the first three heading styles.
Heading 4 nothing!
Heading 5 nothing!
Heading 6 nothing!
Whatever the reason, Word has been that way for a long time.
Add the missing Heading shortcuts
To add the missing shortcuts, modify the style starting with Heading 4.
Or from the Styles pane
In the Modify Style dialog go to the Format button and choose Shortcut Key …
Click in the ‘Press new shortcut key’ field then press the shortcut you want to use. Note you don’t type the label of the shortcut, rather the shortcut combination itself.
Keep an eye on ‘Currently Assigned to’ which alerts you if your new shortcut is already applied to another style or command.
Save changes in: choose which documents or templates this change will apply to. For all documents, choose Normal.dotm (the template for all new blank documents).
For Heading styles presumably you’ll continue the ‘Alt + Ctrl’ plus a digit pattern
Heading 4 Ctrl + Alt + 4 (Mac: Cmd + Opt + 4)
Heading 5 Ctrl + Alt + 5 (Mac: Cmd + Opt + 5)
Heading 6 Ctrl + Alt + 6 (Mac: Cmd + Opt + 6)
And so on. Word has Heading styles from 1 to 9 though most don’t show up on the Recommended style lists or gallery.
