Outlook, Word (and also Powerpoint) : easily move table rows, bullets and paragraphs up and down

This tip is probably most useful when you’re working in a table, although you can use it to reorder paragraphs outside a table, too. It also works with bullet and numbered lists.

Let’s say you decide you want the third row of a table to be the top row. Just click within the third row, hold down [Alt][Shift] and press the up arrow key. Each time you press the arrow key, Word will move the row up one. You can select multiple contiguous rows to move them as a block, and you can use the down arrow key if you want to move text down instead of up.

Using this shortcut gets a little tricky if you’re moving big pieces of text outside a table. It’s easy to lose track of what’s being relocated where, and you might find it easier to take a standard cut-and-paste approach in those situations. But when the text is small and manageable, the shortcut is great. For example, if you need to move an item up or down within a bulleted or numbered list, you can just click in the item’s paragraph and use the [Alt][Shift] and arrow key combo to move the item to the desired spot.

Works in:

• WORD
• OUTLOOK
• POWERPOINT, only in number or bullet lists
• Tables pasted from EXCEL in OUTLOOK, provided they don’t have merged cells

Doesn’t work in:

• EXCEL
• POWERPOINT