(Originally published on Mar 9, 2023 by Ali Forelli)
Hi, Microsoft 365 Insiders! I’m Ali Forelli, a Product Manager on the Word team working on Accessibility features. I’m happy to announce that zooming in and out of your page has become easier with new shortcuts in Word for Windows and Word for Mac!
New Zoom shortcuts in Word
New Zoom shortcuts in Word
With the increased prevalence of remote work in the past few years, reading and consuming information on a multitude of devices and screen sizes has become the norm.
Previously, people could sit in a conference room with a projector for document presentations, work from their multi-monitor desks, or have easy access to printed content for review. Nowadays, an increasing number of users are consuming most of their content on smaller personal screens, such as laptops, tablets, or mobile phones. With these new shortcuts, the Word Product team is making it easier than ever for you to zoom your document to the right level for your screen.
How it works
Many of you use Ctrl+/- to zoom in and out in your browser and in Word for the web. And you have asked for this functionality to also be available in Word for Windows and Mac. Check them out!
While mouse/key focus is in your document:
- Use Ctrl + - to zoom out
- Use Ctrl + + to zoom in
- Use Ctrl + 0 to return back to 100% zoom
- Use Ctrl + Scroll to zoom in and out
NOTE: In Word for Mac, use the Cmd key instead of the Ctrl key.
Feedback in action
Word has been a product since 1983 (Word turns 40 this year!). This long-standing legacy creates a precedent for established user expectations. While the engineering team continues to work on new features for improved user experiences with refreshed and more advanced technology, we don’t always have the opportunity to revise pre-existing behavior.
In the case of keyboard shortcuts, the industry standard has diverged from Word’s initial implementation of these features. Indeed, users expect that Ctrl + +/- will zoom in and out, so when this doesn’t work, the experience can be frustrating. The Word team has heard about this problem from users, so we’re updating keyboard shortcuts as a direct response to this feedback. Accessibility is a priority for Word, and we want to make the zooming experience as seamless as possible.
Other changes to shortcuts
With the new addition of these zoom shortcuts, some existing shortcuts have changed. Below is a table of the full list of changes.
| Feature | New Shortcut (Windows) | New Shortcut (Mac) |
|---|---|---|
| Zoom In | Ctrl + + | Cmd + + |
| Zoom Out | Ctrl + - | Cmd + - |
| Zoom to 100% | Ctrl + 0 | Cmd + 0 |
| Subscript | Ctrl + Shift + - | Cmd + Shift + - |
| Optional Hyphen | Ctrl + Alt + - | Cmd + Option + - |
| Nonbreaking Hyphen | Shift + Alt + - | Shift + Option + - |
| Add or remove one line space preceding a paragraph | Line and Paragraph Spacing Menu | Line and Paragraph Spacing Menu |
NOTE: Superscript remains as is with the Ctrl + Shift + + shortcut.
Want to restore the previous shortcut settings?
To restore the keyboard shortcut assignments to their original settings, you can head over to the Customize Keyboard Shortcuts help article. Below you will find a table of the command names which you may want to reset.
Note: The Optional and Nonbreaking hyphen commands are in the Common Symbols category of the Customize Keyboard dialog. All other commands can be found in the All Commands category.
| Feature | Command Name | Previous Shortcut (Windows) |
|---|---|---|
| Zoom In | ViewZoomIn | None |
| Zoom Out | ViewZoomOut | None |
| Zoom to 100% | Zoom100 | None |
| Subscript | Subscript | Ctrl + + |
| Optional Hyphen | Optional Hyphen | Ctrl + - |
| Nonbreaking Hyphen | Nonbreaking Hyphen | Ctrl + Shift + - |
| Add or remove one line space preceding a paragraph | OpenOrCloseUpPara | Ctrl + 0 |
Availability
Zoom shortcuts in Word are available to Beta Channel users running:
- Windows: Version 16.0.15831.20174 or later
- Mac: Version 16.67.1113.0 or later
(2/20/24) UPDATE: Since publishing this post, we heard from many of you that the Optional Hyphen and Nonbreaking Hyphen shortcuts were important to your workflows. Rather than having you insert them via the Symbols dialog box, we’ve added new shortcuts to give you quicker access. To use these newly added shortcuts, Beta Channel users need to be running:
- Windows: Version 2402 (Build 17328.20108)
- Mac: Version 16.82 (Build 24021813)
Features are released over some time to ensure things are working smoothly. We highlight features that you may not have because they’re slowly releasing to larger numbers of Insiders. Sometimes we remove elements to further improve them based on your feedback. Though this is rare, we also reserve the option to pull a feature entirely out of the product, even if you, as an Insider, have had the opportunity to try it.
Feedback
Please share your feedback with us directly from Word by going to Help > Feedback. We’re excited to hear from you!
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