Full list of Hotmail keyboard shortcuts in Outlook.com

Quick Steps to view and edit keyboard shortcuts in Hotmail:

1. 1 Once logged into your inbox, click on the gear icon (top right corner).
2. 2 Choose Options, and click on the "Keyboard shortcuts" link.
3. 3 Pick "Turn off keyboard shortcuts" to disable them.
4. 4 Otherwise, choose which shortcuts to use (Outlook.com, Gmail, or Yahoo).
5. 5 Click Save to apply, or the link to view the full list.

Using keyboard shortcuts in Hotmail

The first time you hit a keyboard shortcut (like Ctrl+Enter to send a email), you'll see the following confirmation message: "You just used a keyboard shortcut. If you didn't mean to do that, click Cancel. To turn off shortcuts, or switch your shortcut mode, go to Options". Click OK to accept the shortcut, or click Cancel / hit the Esc escape key to abort. The next section explains how to optionally turn them off:

 Tip for beginners: if you aren't familiar with keyboard shortcuts, here's how they work. When you see a plus sign between keys, that means that you have to press simultaneously several keys on your keyboard. To take the example of Ctrl+Enter, you have to hold down the Ctrl key, and while holding down the Ctrl key, hit the Enter key - and then, you can let go of all keys!

 Then, there are single-key keyboard shortcuts, like "N", to compose a new message: those will only work when you are outside of a text field (search box, To / Cc / Bcc fields, subject line, email body, etc.) If you hit N inside an editable text field, it will simply type a letter "N"! 

Customize your default keyboard shortcuts - or turn them off!

To change your keyboard shortcuts, click on the Settings button (gear icon, top right corner of the screen), and choose "Options" from the dropdown. Next, click on the "Keyboard shortcuts" link under the last section ("Customizing Outlook.com"). You will reach a page that offers four options: by default, Outlook.com is selected - these are the standard keyboard shortcuts, and they're turned on by default.

• Select "Turn off keyboard shortcuts" to completely disable keyboard shortcuts: all standard web browser shortcuts (like F5 to refresh, Ctrl+T to open a new tab, etc.) will still work, but anything "Hotmail-related" will need to be performed with a mouse gesture or click. Notice that when keyboard shortcuts are enabled, Hotmail will show you the keystroke between parentheses; when they're disabled, you won't get that indication any longer:
• The default "Outlook.com" setting, formerly called "Outlook and Outlook Web Access (OWA)", uses close to the same keyboard shortcuts as Microsoft Outlook (MS Office email program) and other mail apps by Microsoft (like Outlook Express or Windows Live Mail). These include "odd" keystrokes, like the Ins key to flag / unflag emails: in Hotmail, you can forward a message by hitting Shift+F, whereas you use Ctrl+F in Microsoft Outlook - that's because Ctrl+F is already used by the web browser to find text on the page! Another counter-example is Ctrl+N for a new message: in a web browser, it opens a new window, so "N" it is in Hotmail!
• "Yahoo Mail!" allows you to use the same keyboard shortcuts as the world's second most popular webmail service. If you've created a Yahoo Mail account and used it for some time, no need to relearn new shortcuts when you switch back and forth with Outlook.com! There are some major difference for some shortcuts: for example, to mark an email as Read or Unread in Yahoo, you use K and Shift+K; the same action with the default Outlook.com in Hotmail calls for hitting Ctrl+Q (read) or Ctrl+U (unread) - same as in Microsoft Outlook.com.
• The "Gmail" option allows you to mimic the keyboard shortcuts used in Google's classic webmail service (the keyboard shortcuts for the new Google Inbox offering are very different). The table at the bottom of this tutorial allows you to switch between each of the three keyboard shortcut options to compare them. Pick the one you prefer, based on the other webmail services you use, and/or your favorite desktop email program. Once you've made your selection, apply it by clicking on the Save button:

Tip: hitting the question mark (the keyboard shortcut to show all keyboard shortcuts :) will let you go directly to that screen: click on the "go to settings" link that appears next to the "Outlook.com / Gmail / Yahoo! Mail-style keyboard shortcuts are enabled" notice at the bottom: 

Full keyboard shortcuts list

Here's your list of Hotmail keyboard shortcuts: use the dropdown menu to view the differences between each of the three settings. When you are inside your inbox (outside of a text-editable field), you can type a question mark to show the full list as an overlay (hit the escape key -Esc- to return to your inbox). Each function includes a link that lets you jump to the corresponding tutorial:

Note: Microsoft has updated the keyboard shortcuts Outlook.com supports since it transitioned from Windows Live Hotmail in later summer 2012 (like N and Ctrl+N behind now both supported). Also: remember that single letter keyboard shortcuts only work when the insertion point (blinking cursor) is outside of a text field - otherwise, you'll just end up typing the letter in question!

Managing emails and folders

Here's the first list: the columns on the right indicate the corresponding keyboard shortcut, based on the option you picked (Outlook.com, Gmail, or Yahoo Mail). Blank cells means that no shortcut is assigned to that action under that setting (example: selecting or deselecting all messages under "Yahoo Mail"). As you can tell from the screenshot below, Outlook.com (the default Hotmail setting) has the most keyboard shortcuts, followed by Gmail and Yahoo Mail. These are the screens you see when you type a question mark outside of a text-editable field (master keystroke to show the full list!)

 Tip: when you are  outside a text field, the Undo functionality is grayed out (translucent / disabled) until there's a last action to undo. Then, the Ctrl+Z keyboard shortcut becomes available, which you can tell by looking at the arrow button: it is now white (and clickable).

Handling, composing, and sending mail

And now, here's a list of shortcuts that deal with individual messages: reading, composing, replying, or forwarding emails. As an extra tip, you can hit the Tab key to go from one text field to the next (example: going from recipients to subject line to email body) - and hitting Shift+Tab will go to the previous field:

Editing and formatting a message

These keyboard shortcuts only work when you are inside the email body of the message you are composing - be it a brand new email, a reply, or a forward. The second table gives you a list of text editing keyboard shortcuts: these are not part of Hotmail - they're the ones you can use on Windows and Linux in nearly all text editors (and text boxes on web pages). The formatting commands are listed in the same order as the one in which they appear in the formatting toolbar, in the message editor:

 Note: although Outlook.com still lists F7 as a keyboard shortcut to check your spelling, it doesn't seem to have an effect (it used to!) Microsoft probably retired that functionality, since just about every recent web browser includes its own spell checker!

Standard text editing / text navigation keyboard shortcuts

This list is for Windows and Linux; on Mac OS X, you generally use Cmd instead of Ctrl:

Tip: if you hold down the Shift key while using one of these last six navigation shortcuts, you'll expand the selection! (Example: hitting Shift+Home (as opposed to just Home) wouldn't just go to the beginning of the line: it would select from the current position up to the start of the line!)

Donate, speak out, or read more!