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Quickly find the command you need

Feature deep dive
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Greetings, Office Insiders! I’m Derik Stenerson, a Product Manager on the Office Search team. Today, I’m excited to share an insider’s look at how we are facilitating finding the right command at the right time while creating and editing content.

Do you ever open a shortcut menu, hoping to see the tool you want to use, only to find it’s not there? With close to 5,000 distinct commands across Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, it’s easy to see how struggling to locate the command you need can slow you down and reduce your productivity.

Quickly find the command you need

We know that shortcut menus help keep your attention on what matters – your content and taking action on it. achieve this goal by surfacing a lightweight set of commonly and frequently used commands, but there are times when the command you’re looking for is not there and you’re forced to go “command hunting.”

For example, let’s say you want to reset a picture you’ve applied a style to in PowerPoint. You’d have to scan carefully and use the tooltips to find the correct menu and button in the ribbon on the Picture tab. However, it can be easily retrieved by typing the first three-character of the command name in the shortcut menu:

Demo of searching for commands from a shortcut menu

How it works

  1. Right-click an area or object in your document, worksheet, or presentation. NOTE: You can also use the menu key on your keyboard or press Shift+F10 to display the shortcut menu.
  2. Type the first few letters of the command you are looking for in the Search box at the top of the shortcut menu.

Shortcut menu showing a command search box

3. Click the command you want or use the arrow keys to select it, and then press ENTER.

Shortcut menu with the command search box filled

Availability

This feature is currently available on the following platforms and in the following apps: 

  • Web: Word, Excel, and PowerPoint 
  • Windows:  Word, Excel, and PowerPoint for Office Insiders running Beta Channel and Current Channel (Preview) Version 2206 (Build 15331.20010) or later.

Don’t have it yet? It’s probably us, not you.

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

We hope you love this new feature. Please let us know what you think by clicking the Help Improve Office button in the upper right corner of the app window on Windows, or selecting Help > Feedback on the web.

Learn what other information you should include in your feedback to ensure it’s actionable and reaches the right people. We’re excited to hear from you!