It’s common to include links on a slide. But if you hide the link to avoid distracting the audience, you might forget the link exists — except PowerPoint won’t let you. It provides a visual clue when the mouse hovers over a link, hidden or not. What is that visual clue?

Last week we asked…

Can you apply a Word style using just the keyboard? The answer I had in mind was to create a shortcut key for the style, but as usual, some of you offered innovative solutions.

Thetreverj walked through the keyboard shortcuts for opening the Format menu and choosing the appropriate style. Thanks to Saleem for providing similar instructions for Word 2007. It’s an easy-to-use solution that requires no automation.

Ewitt mentioned the predefined keyboard shortcuts for existing styles, which is the first half of the answer I had in mind. Ron_007 mention that the other half of the solution is to create a keyboard shortcut for the styles you apply often, as follows:

  1. Choose Styles And Formatting from the Format menu to open the Styles And Formatting task pane.
  2. Locate the style you want to automate via the keyboard. Click that style’s drop-down arrow and choose Modify Style. (The arrow won’t appear until you hover over the style item.)
  3. In the Modify dialog box, choose Shortcut Key from Format drop-down list.
  1. The Current Keys control will display a keyboard shortcut if one already exists. To create a keyboard shortcut, press the appropriate keys, and Word will display them in the Press New Shortcut Key control.


  1. To apply the new style, simply select the text and press the shortcut keys you assigned in step 4.

Thanks also to Rick_From_BC for sharing his experience using a keyboard shortcut to apply styles.