How to Format Text in Microsoft Loop Easily 2026

Click into any text on a Loop page and highlight the words you want to style. A small toolbar appears just above the selection with Bold, Italic, Underline and Strikethrough buttons, followed by a text-colour button (the A with a small arrow) and a few more controls.

The toolbar works the same way anywhere text lives on the page: a paragraph under a heading, a line typed beneath a task table, a note after an embedded link. Select, click, done.

Click the arrow beside the A. The menu opens with Default at the top, which strips any colour back off, and then two sections.

Color changes the letters themselves. Background puts a highlight behind them.

Both offer the same nine options: Gray, Pink, Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue green, Blue and Purple. You can set one of each on the same text, say red letters on a yellow background.

Use colour sparingly. A page where every other line is tinted stops signalling anything, so keep it for the few items that need to stand out, like a risk or a decision.

With text selected, Ctrl+B, Ctrl+I and Ctrl+U apply bold, italic and underline on Windows, and ⌘+B, ⌘+I and ⌘+U do the same on a Mac. Ctrl+K (⌘+K) adds a link.

Headings have their own shortcuts: Ctrl+Alt+1, 2 or 3 on Windows and Option+⌘+1, 2 or 3 on a Mac. Loop has three heading levels, not six. Strikethrough and text colour have no keyboard shortcut in Microsoft's list, so use the toolbar for those, or Markdown for strikethrough.

Loop converts Markdown as you type, which saves reaching for the toolbar mid-sentence. At the start of a line, # plus a space gives Heading 1, ## gives Heading 2 and ### gives Heading 3.

A > and a space starts a quote, --- and a space adds a divider, and [ ] and a space starts a checklist item ([x] for one already ticked). Inside a line, wrap text in **double asterisks** for bold, *single asterisks* for italic, ~~double tildes~~ for strikethrough, or backticks for inline code. Three backticks and a space open a code block.

Ctrl+. (⌘+. on a Mac) turns the current line into a bulleted list, and Ctrl+1 (⌘+1) makes it a checklist. Tab indents a line one level and Shift+Tab brings it back, which is how you build nested bullets.

For anything else, type / to open what Microsoft calls the Discover menu of components and block types. Once the page is styled, scroll back through and check heading levels line up, with sections of equal weight all on the same level.