How to use Outlook’s built-in keyboard shortcuts

There’s a hidden, time-saving world of shortcuts hidden in your keyboard. Learn about the best shortcuts for Outlook and become an even more efficient email machine.

Why use keyboard shortcuts?

Why does anyone use a shortcut? To save time. Rather than looking for buttons or wiggling your mouse around, why not take full advantage of your keyboard to navigate through Outlook? Keyboard shortcuts can also help users with mobility issues or who are visually impaired work faster and more effectively.

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Keyboard shortcuts should be the default setting in your version of Outlook. Here’s some of the most popular—and useful—Outlook keyboard shortcuts and when to use them—and there are more than these out there.

Switch to mail and switch to calendar. Toggling between your mail and your calendar can be a pain. To reach your calendar, hit Ctrl + 2, and to get to your mailbox, press Ctrl + 1.
Scrolling through emails. When you have a lot of messages to sort through, any way to speed up the process helps. You can go to the next message by hitting Ctrl + > and return to the previous message by hitting Ctrl + <. And you can do the ever-popular action of deleting of emails with the Delete key, or permanently delete the message with Shift + Delete.
Creating new items. Creating a new message or calendar item can both be accomplished with Ctrl + N.
Replying. Rather than hit the reply button, Ctrl + R works too. You can reply all with Ctrl + Shift + R. You can send with Ctrl + Enter, and forward with Ctrl + F.
Refresh. You can refresh or check for new email by using either F9 or Ctrl + M.

Searching and sorting through messages.

Are you someone who uses your Outlook as a giant filing cabinet? These keyboard shortcuts are faster ways to create folders and look through messages to find what you need.

To put a message in a folder, try Ctrl + Shift + V
You can create a new folder with Ctrl + Shift + E
You can switch folders with Ctrl + Shift + Y

There are a few different search shortcut options as well:

F11 will help you find a contact
Alt + Q helps you generally search in Outlook
Ctrl + Alt +K allows you to search the current folder
You can search all folders with Ctrl + Alt + A
Ctrl + Alt + Z will let you search subfolders
Run an advanced search with Ctrl+ Shift + F

Message actions

Try these keyboard shortcuts for when you’re working in an individual Outlook message:

To open messages in a new window, hit Shift + Enter.
You can save with Ctrl + S
Use spell check by hitting F7
Insert a hyperlink by hitting Ctrl + K

Font and text modifications

These are a quick and easy way to alter how your email text appears once you highlight the relevant section:

Ctrl + B makes your text bold
Ctrl + I makes your text italic
Ctrl + U will underline your text
Ctrl + Shift + L will let you insert a bulleted list
Ctrl + ] will increase your font size
Ctrl + [ will decrease your font size

Knowing your way through the sometimes-hidden world of keyboard shortcuts will help you get through your inbox faster—maybe even to inbox zero—and arrange calendar events with lightning speed. And who knows, you may even impress your coworkers—or your boss?