Quick Keys Quickies

We’ve all faced the problem of making a simple change to a series of paragraphs in a document, or inserting some choice item in each cell of a table, cases where Microsoft Word’s Edit-replace just can’t get the job done.

The mantra is “If it’s boring and repetitive, WRITE A MACRO”, but who has time to catalogue a vast array of macros which, having been used once, can be discarded?

The solution lies in recording a macro and assigning it to a fixed shortcut key combination, and to ease your transition into this amazing world, I’ve recorded a three-minute video which you can see through YouTube, or in higher definition (and longer download time) from my video collection.

I’ll spell out the keyboard sequences you need in the table below; you may want to print it out for future reference.

In the table below I suggest you use Ctrl-Shift-K as your shortcut key combination; it is not assigned to any special command in Microsoft Word, and is easy to remember.

I’ve used “{Your keyboard sequence}” to represent whatever keystrokes you require to perform your action one time. You will, of course, merely use the keyboard to perform your action one time.

Keyboard sequence	Full command
Alt-T, M, R	Choose Tools, Macro, Record
Alt-K, Ctrl-Shift-K, Enter, Enter	Choose Keyboard, Ctrl-Shift-K as the shortcut key combination, Assign, Close.
{Your keyboard sequence}	Here is where you will use the keyboard to perform the action, one time, that you want to assign to Ctrl-Shift-K.
Alt-T, M, R	Choose Tools, Macro, stop Recording.<= /p>

That’s it!

Position your cursor at the start of the text to be modified, hold down both the Ctrl and Shift keys, and tap the letter “K” repeatedly.

Here’s a full example of my assigning to Ctrl-Shift-K a macro that will insert alternate sequence fields at the head of a set of paragraphs.

Keyboard sequence	Full command
Alt-T, M, R	Choose Tools, Macro, Record
Alt-K, Ctrl-Shift-K, Enter, Enter	Choose Keyboard, Ctrl-Shift-K as the shortcut key combination, Assign, Close.
(, Ctrl-F9,seq,,question,, ,),	This inserts a sequence field “question”, surrounded by parentheses, with a space between the closing parenthesis and the paragraph text.
Ctrl-Down-Arrow	This moves to the next paragraph
(, Ctrl-F9,seq,,answer,, ,),	This inserts a sequence field “answer”, surrounded by parentheses, with a space between the closing parenthesis and the paragraph text.
Ctrl-Down-Arrow	This moves to the next paragraph
Alt-T, M, R	Choose Tools, Macro, stop Recording.