Open Office Writer Keyboard Shortcuts: The Complete List

Open Office Writer supports more than 80 keyboard shortcuts covering formatting, navigation, tables, headers and footers, and document-wide function key commands. This guide covers every one of them, explains what each does, and includes a free downloadable PDF cheat sheet.

Developed by Apache, OpenOffice Writer is the word processor inside Apache OpenOffice, the leading free and open-source office suite. Learning its shortcuts is one of the fastest ways to speed up formatting, navigation, and editing without reaching for the mouse.

What Is a Keyboard Shortcut in Open Office Writer

A keyboard shortcut is a key or combination of keys that triggers a command instantly, without opening a menu or clicking a toolbar icon. In Writer, shortcuts exist for nearly everything: applying a heading style, jumping to the start of a document, inserting a page break, or navigating inside a table. Apache OpenOffice’s own documentation notes that the entire program can be operated without a mouse or trackball at all, using shortcuts alone.

Most Writer shortcuts use the same Ctrl-based pattern across Windows, Mac, and Linux, which is one advantage it has over Microsoft Word, where Mac shortcuts frequently swap Ctrl for Cmd.

Most Used Open Office Writer Shortcuts

A conditional hyphen only becomes visible if the word breaks across two lines at that point. A non-breaking space or non-breaking hyphen stops two words (like “10 km” or a phone number) from splitting across a line break.

Formatting Shortcuts

Strikethrough has no default keyboard shortcut in Open Office Writer. Unlike bold, italic and underline, strikethrough is applied through Format > Character > Font Effects, or the Strikethrough button in the sidebar. If you use it often, you can assign your own shortcut through Tools > Customize > Keyboard by selecting the Strikethrough command and mapping it to a free key combination.

Navigation and Selection Shortcuts

Working With Tables Shortcuts

Regular Tab and Shift+Tab move between cells in a table, the same as in most spreadsheet and table tools. Ctrl+Tab is reserved for inserting an actual tab character inside a cell.

Function Key Shortcuts

Header, Footer, and Page Break Shortcuts

Headers and footers in Writer are pre-configured with left, center, and right tab stops, so a plain Tab press moves the cursor between those positions instead of typing a literal tab character. To insert an actual tab character at the start of a header (a common source of confusion), use Ctrl + Tab, not Tab.

Download the Free PDF Cheat Sheet

Download the Open Office Writer Shortcuts PDF to keep every shortcut in this guide on hand, printable and offline.

Frequently Asked Questions

Which key is used to insert a tab at the start of a header in OpenOffice?

Ctrl + Tab. A plain Tab press in a header moves the cursor between the built-in left, center, and right tab stops instead of typing a tab character, so Ctrl+Tab is required to insert an actual tab at that position.

What is the Open Office Writer shortcut for strikethrough?

There isn’t a default one. Apply strikethrough through Format > Character > Font Effects, or assign your own shortcut via Tools > Customize > Keyboard.

Are Open Office Writer shortcuts the same on Windows, Mac, and Linux?

Yes. Unlike Microsoft Word, which swaps some Ctrl shortcuts for Cmd on Mac, Open Office Writer uses the same Ctrl-based shortcuts across all three operating systems.

How do I create a custom keyboard shortcut in Open Office Writer?

Go to Tools > Customize > Keyboard. Choose whether the shortcut applies to Writer only or the whole OpenOffice suite, select the command you want (a menu function, a style, or a macro), pick an unused key combination, and click Modify, then OK.

What is the shortcut for Open Office Calc, not Writer?

Calc is OpenOffice’s spreadsheet program and uses a different, though overlapping, shortcut set (for example, Ctrl+; inserts today’s date in a cell, which has no equivalent in Writer). See our dedicated Open Office Calc shortcuts guide for the full list.

How many keyboard shortcuts does Open Office Writer have?

More than 80 when you combine the core Writer shortcuts, table shortcuts, function key shortcuts, and header/footer shortcuts covered in this guide.

Conclusion

Open Office Writer’s keyboard shortcuts cover far more than the handful most people memorize. Between formatting, navigation, table editing, function keys, and header and footer controls, there are more than 80 combinations that can replace a mouse click, and a few of them (like Ctrl+Tab in a header) solve problems that trip up even experienced users.

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