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Somehow I accident made text input in any text box becomes right alignment (OS-wide). I guess it might be 'windows+(somekey)' or 'ctrl+(somekey)'. Does anyone know this shortcut? and how to restore it back to default left alignment. Thanks!

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Text boxes like on web sites? (That would be odd.) – Arjan Mar 1 '10 at 19:10
(Not too odd, after doing some more testing given Bavi_H's answer.) – Arjan Mar 2 '10 at 7:05
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4 Answers

up vote 3 down vote accepted

Perhaps your computer has multiple languages installed and one is a right-to-left language? In Windows XP, you can set either Left Alt+Shift or Ctrl+Shift to change the language.

If the Language Bar is enabled, you can also click on it to change the language and keyboard layout.

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I figured that when RTL (right-to-left) was enabled, typing would .neht siht ekil gnihtemos dleiy Likewise, I expected that selecting text would be from right to left as well. But though that is true for true RTL languages, typing and selecting does not seem to go backwards when typing LTR (left-to-right) within a RTL selection (try to select the text in "مرحبا العالم ، مرحبا missingspace ، لترى ما أعنيه." from translate.google.com/… to see what I mean.) So, I guess you're right, somehow RTL is activated! – Arjan Mar 2 '10 at 7:07
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up vote 2 down vote

There is no "OS-wide" hotkeys that will do this for every application, but in general, Microsoft typically uses these 3 shortcuts for text alignment in their programs:

Ctrl + L - Align text left

Ctrl + E - Align text center

Ctrl + R - Align text right

Some programs will follow this and some won't. It's application specific really.

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Spot on with those for apps, especially Word, PowerPoint, Outlook. NB as well: Ctrl + J = Justify In OneNote, Ctrl+E jumps to the search box. Ctrl+J does not seem to do anything In Excel: Ctrl+L inserts a Table (2007, or a List in previous versions) Ctrl+R is the fill-right feature (like Ctrl+D for fill down) Ctrl+J, Ctrl+E doe nothing as far as I know. As for OS-wide setting for alignment, no idea. Right-to-left language settings? Very weird. – AdamV Mar 1 '10 at 21:20
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up vote 2 down vote

The shortcut is 'right ctrl'+'right shift' to make the text right aligned, and 'left ctrl'+'left shift' to make the text left aligned again. This works in any text box.

I don't think this has anything to do with input language, as I have removed all such keyboard shortcuts and can still get this functionality.

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I believe that this is the answer to the question that was asked. – David Alpert Mar 18 '11 at 0:59
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up vote 1 down vote

For any text box, just press CTRL + SHIFT + X for both alignments.

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