Understanding and Undo Changes with Microsoft Word Document

Microsoft word provides two important features called Undo, which is used to undo the previous action and second one is Repeat or Redo, which is used to repeat the previous action.

Undo

You can quickly reverse most commands you execute by using Undo. If you then change your mind again, and want to reapply a command, you can use Redo.

For example, If you mistakenly delete text, you can use the Undo feature to recover it, similar way if delete a character and you want to delete more characters then you can use Redo operation.

How to use Undo & Redo operations:

You can access the Undo and Repeat buttons from the Quick Access toolbar. You should make a note that Repeat button also called Redo button and both operations have same meaning.

1. Type some text in a blank document as I have typed above. Now click Repeat (Redo) button and you will see that word would repeat the same operation for you.

2. Now to examine undo operation, let us delete last word operation character by character so that in this example, the remained text as in the below selected word result.

3. Let us try to click Undo button one by one. You will see that work would recover all the deleted characters one by one after performing few undo operations.

Shortcuts to use Undo & Repeat

Though you can access the Undo and Repeat commands from the Quick Access toolbar, but because these commands are the most frequently used commands, so we should use the keyboard shortcuts which are quickly to work with your document:

Shortcuts	Action
Ctrl + Z	Undoes the previous action.
Ctrl + Y	Repeats the previous action.

Note that if the previous action was Undo, Ctrl+Y redoes the undone action.