Please Note: This article is written for users of the following Microsoft Word versions: 2007, 2010, 2013, and 2016. If you are using an earlier version (Word 2003 or earlier), this tip may not work for you. For a version of this tip written specifically for earlier versions of Word, click here: Speeding Up Cursor Movement.
Do you ever become impatient when using the cursor control keys (the arrows) to scroll through text in your document? Depending on your system settings, it can be a painfully slow process to move through a document a single character at a time.
To speed things up considerably, just hold down the Ctrl key and press either the left or right arrow keys. This causes the insertion point to jump from word to word, rather than character to character. The increase in speed is dramatic.
WordTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Word training. (Microsoft Word is the most popular word processing software in the world.) This tip (12546) applies to Microsoft Word 2007, 2010, 2013, and 2016. You can find a version of this tip for the older menu interface of Word here: Speeding Up Cursor Movement.
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2016-03-03 13:53:58
Dave Wolf
To really supercharge cursor movement, you can also use Ctrl+Up/Down to move by a full paragraph in either direction.
2013-03-16 15:05:38
Kat
Thank you! Such a simple tip, that I'm sure will speed up my Word editing dramatically!
Generally impressed with the emails you send, and have forwarded a couple to people I know they will help too.
Got a version of Word that uses the ribbon interface (Word 2007 or later)? This site is for you! If you use an earlier version of Word, visit our WordTips site focusing on the menu interface.
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Please Note:
This article is written for users of the following Microsoft Word versions: 2007, 2010, 2013, and 2016. If you are using an earlier version (Word 2003 or earlier), this tip may not work for you. For a version of this tip written specifically for earlier versions of Word, click here: 
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