Windows Word shortcuts on a Mac

On Windows, pressing Alt puts a letter on every tab and button of Word's ribbon. Word for Mac has no such letters. RibbonKeys draws them: tap Option, and the letters of Word for Windows appear over the ribbon. Type them, and the button is pressed.

How it works in Word

1. Tap ⌥

   With Word in front, tap the Option key by itself. Every tab gets its letter: H Home, N Insert, G Design, P Layout, S References, M Mailings, R Review and W View.

2. Type the tab's letter

   The tab opens and every control on it gets its letters. A letter you have typed turns faint, and the letters it rules out are dimmed. The last letter presses the button: H 1 is Bold, H A C centres the paragraph.

3. Type on, or step back

   A button that opens a menu gives its items letters too, and so does each submenu: H B opens Borders, whose item Borders and Shading… takes O. Esc steps back one level. Another tap on ⌥, or a click, ends the sequence.

Holding ⌥ down with the first letter starts a sequence too, as Alt does on Windows, except while the keyboard is in a text field, where ⌥ goes on typing accents and symbols. A tap on ⌥ by itself always starts one.

Sequences in Word

• ⌥ H 1 Bold
• ⌥ H E Clear Formatting
• ⌥ H V S Paste Special…
• ⌥ H B O Borders and Shading…
• ⌥ N B Page Break
• ⌥ N T I Insert Table…
• ⌥ N H E Edit Header
• ⌥ P M A Custom Margins…
• ⌥ S F Insert Footnote
• ⌥ R G Track Changes
• ⌥ R A L Accept All Changes
• ⌥ W K Navigation Pane

Every letter of every tab is on the full list of Word shortcuts, generated from the app's own tables.

What to know

• Galleries stay on the arrow keys. As on Windows, a gallery or a palette has no letter for each item. H U opens the bullet library, and the arrow keys and Return pick a bullet.
• A narrow window. When the window is too narrow for a group, Word folds it into one button. RibbonKeys gives that button its Windows letters with a Z, such as H Z F for the Font group, and the tab's own letters then apply inside it.
• Only the ribbon. Word's dialogs and its menu bar get no letters, and neither do the tabs Word adds for what is selected, such as those for a table or a picture. The Ctrl+U switch is for Excel only.
• Draw and Developer. These two tabs have their letters in the tables, J I and L, and have not been tested on a live ribbon yet.
• What was checked. The letters were seen on the live ribbon of a standard document for Home, Insert, Design, Layout, References, Mailings, Review and View, and on the menus their buttons open.

The same licence

One licence covers Word, Excel and PowerPoint on the same Mac. In Excel, RibbonKeys also gives dialogs their letters and takes the menu keys of Excel 2003: see Windows Excel shortcuts on a Mac. PowerPoint works as Word does: see Windows PowerPoint shortcuts on a Mac. Questions about the licence, working offline, privacy and updates are answered on the questions page.

Free for 7 days, with no account and no card. After that €3.99 a month or €59.99 once, including VAT.
Needs macOS 13 or later and Word for Mac.

Every Word shortcut · RibbonKeys