Keyboard Shortcut of the Week

Go To Previous Revision - Shift + F5

One of my favorite keyboard shortcuts is Shift + F5, Go To Previous Revision. This feature toggles among the last three revisions made.

I use this shortcut most often when I accidentally press the Page Down key when I’m going for the Delete key – a constant problem for me because I use different keyboards and they aren’t laid out the same. Rather than scrolling back through the document to find my place, I just press Shift + F5 and the insertion point jumps back to its last position. Pressing Shift + F5 again takes me to the revision I made before that one, and, using the function a third time takes me back to the revision before that.

This shortcut also works between open documents. So, even if your last edit was in another open document, the insertion point will jump right to it. I find this especially helpful when I’m copying text from one document to paste into another.

For those of you who remember this shortcut from previous version of Word, you’ll notice in Word 2007, the history of past revisions is not saved with the document as it was in Word 97. Let’s hope they bring this functionality back in the next release!