Tip of the week # 455
30 July 2015


Delete tricks (Outlook, Word, PowerPoint and Access) *

Many many moons ago (in June 2010, see tip_312.php) I wrote about a quick way to delete words in Word. As I often encounter people who don't know this trick and because it also works in Outlook, PowerPoint and even in text fields in Access I decided to dust the tip off.

  1. Press the DEL (or DELETE) key to delete characters to the right of the insertion point
  2. Press the BACKSPACE key to delete characters to the left of the insertion point
  3. Press CTRL + DELETE to delete the word to the right of the insertion point
  4. Press CTRL + BACKSPACE to delete the word to the left of the insertion point

If you want to delete more than one word simply hold down the CTRL key. For example, hold down the CTRL key and press DELETE three times to delete three words to the right of where your pointer is.


* Unless stated otherwise, these tips were written for Microsoft Office 2010.