Modifying Keyboard Shortcuts in Word/Office 2007

Ever found yourself wanting to modify a keyboard shortcut in Word 2007 or other Microsoft Office products? I just experienced extreme frustration due to mistakes in the online help, and I want to offer the solution to others.

You may find old references telling you to use the Tools menu, but there IS no tools menu in Word/Office 2007. Instead, hit the "Office button" (the colored one in the top left corner), then notice the "Word Options" button at the bottom right, under the list of "recent documents".  Then choose "Customize" on list of options on the left, then at the bottom of the screen shown, notice the "keyboard shortcuts" "customize" button. Phew.

From there, you can use explanations found even in old references.  In my case, I went to the "press new shortcut key" field and entered the keystroke for which I wanted to add a new combination (in my case, ctrl-y, to redo and undo) and it reported underneath the box for "current keys" that this was assigned to "EditRedoorRepeat".

Now if I wanted to assign a new key to that, I had to find it in the list of options under "specify a command" for "categories" and "commands". Rather than hunt all over, I chose "all commands" from near the bottom of the categories list, then found EditRedoorRepeat in the alpha-ordered list of commands. I then entered my preferred new (additional) keystroke for a redo (ctrl-shift-z). It showed me that it was already assigned to something, but I didn't care about that. I clicked "assign", and it added it to the list of keystrokes for that EditRedoorRepeat command.

Then I clicked "close" and "ok", and wrote this blog entry Hope it helps someone.

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