7 Docs Shortcuts to Make Life Easier

I love a good keyboard shortcut. I don't know exactly how my life would work without Ctrl-X, Ctrl-C, and Ctrl-V. If you don't know what I'm talking about, stop, learn, and change your life.

Here are my favorite keyboard shortcuts for Google Docs that can streamline your day!

Have you ever pasted text from a webpage or another document, and it comes with weird background colors, funky formatting, and other irritations that cause you extra steps? Ctrl-Shift-V will paste the text without any of that extra junk! Then you can format using the Format Painter!

Nothing is worse that working with a document where someone used hard returns (constantly hitting that ENTER key) to move to another page. If you add any text before this, it's going to mess up the formatting of the rest of the document. Use a Page Break, on the other hand, and your formatting is saved. Plus, you save your poor ENTER key a headache from being constantly smacked to go to a new page!

Going hand in hand with tip #1 is Copy and Paste Text Formatting. If you've got text formatted just how you like it (font, size, italics, etc), then highlight some of that text, hit CTRL+ALT+C, then highlight the text you want to format in the same way and hit CTRL+ALT+V. Voila! Formatting magic!!!

I'm a hardcore Google fan. I could go forever without touching Microsoft Office again. There is one feature I miss, though. Office has a quick font increase button, and Google doesn't. You can accomplish this with this shortcut. Just highlight text and hit CTRL+SHIFT+< to make your text one size smaller, or CTRL+SHIFT+> to make your text one size bigger. I actually like this even better than Office, because it goes one point at a time instead of jumping between the defaults.

We've all been there. You highlight a bunch of text, release the mouse, and realize you left off one stinking word. Just hit CTRL+SHIFT and the arrow in whatever direction you need to go. Bingo! You've got that word! Also, if you hold down just SHIFT, it will go one character at time. Use the down and up arrows to extend to the beginning or end of a whole paragraph.

Fingers getting tired? Start Voice Typing! Just hit CTRL+SHIFT+S, and click the microphone. Start talking, and Google Docs will type what you say. You can even insert punctuation by saying "comma, period, question mark." You may never type again once you get good at this!

Mess up your formatting? Take it back to the document default quickly and easily. Highlight text, then hit CTRL+ALT+0 (zero). It'll return that text to your document default, and you can get on with your life!