Shortcut keys don't work in MS-Word on Win8

At last after a lot of searching on the Internet I found the solution:

You must select English as the default keyboard language (control panel -> regional settings -> keyboard).

If you select a non-English language as the default keyboard language and open Microsoft Word a lot of shortcuts will change to IBM Common User Access mode (e.g. Ctrl+C will change to Ctrl+Ins and Ctrl+V will change to Shift+Ins)

Note that if you set English as the default keyboard language everything will still work even while you're switching your keyboard language to type non-English text.

This problem appears in all Office versions from 2003 to 2013. It also appears in all versions of Windows since Windows 2000 and at least with Hebrew, Greek and Arabic languages but I guess with many (all?) others as well.

Note: For Windows 10 the above option is found under Control Panel -> Clock, Language, and Region -> Change input methods (under Language) -> Advanced Settings (on the left) -> Override for default input method.


Go to Word options → Customize → Keyboard shortcuts (customize) → Categories → All commands.

At EditCopy or EditRedo or others Press new shortcut key and press Assign.


Motti, I'm having the EXACT same issue with Hebrew Word 2010 and my newly installed Windows 8 (installed during the snow day!). When I went into the customized shortcuts, I chose to save these settings for THIS file (rather than for Normal, which always seems to give me trouble). Then it worked, and not just in that file!