Docs · guide

How to strikethrough on Google Docs, and take it off

By Alberto Gulotta · Updated 3 September 2026 · 11 min read

How to strikethrough on google docs takes one shortcut or three menu clicks. It has no button of its own beside Bold and Italic, and that absence is what turns a one-click formatting job into something that has to be looked up. Both routes are below, and both are Google’s own.

1. Select the text you want to cross out. A word, a line, a paragraph: the command works on whatever is selected.
2. Press Alt + Shift + 5. That is Google’s own shortcut, and it is the whole operation.
3. Or take the menu: Format, then Text, then Strikethrough. There is no button beside Bold and Italic on the toolbar, which is the reason this gets looked up at all.
4. To remove it, do the same thing again. The command is a switch, not an action: the shortcut and the menu item both toggle.
5. If you meant to propose a deletion rather than decorate one, use Suggesting instead. Strikethrough is a font style; a suggestion is a change somebody can accept or reject.

It sits with the other formatting that hides in a menu — the same drawer as the hanging indent and tracked changes, all of them one click deep and none of them on the toolbar.

If the shortcut does nothing, the first thing to check is which one you are pressing. Google’s shortcuts reference gives Alt + Shift + 5 for Windows and Chrome OS and ⌘ + Shift + X for a Mac — not two spellings of one combination, but two different keys. On Windows the usual cause after that is the number row: the shortcut wants the 5 above the letters rather than the one on a numeric keypad, and on some layouts the combination is taken by something else. On a Mac no number is involved at all, so any advice about the 5 is a dead end there. The menu route always works, which is why it is worth knowing even if you prefer shortcuts.

On a phone the route exists even though the instructions stop short of it. Google’s Android steps are to open the document, tap Edit, double-tap the text and “Move the blue markers to select more text”, then tap Format — at which point the instruction ends with “Choose a format option” and never says what the options are. The list appears only on the Computer tab, where strikethrough sits fourth under Bold, Italic and Underline. So the place to look on a phone is the Text section of that Format panel, and the reason you cannot confirm it from the help page is that the help page does not enumerate it.

Removing one that somebody else added is the same two actions. Select the struck text and press the shortcut, or go back through Format › Text and choose Strikethrough again. There is no separate remove command, because it was never a separate state — it is a switch.

One place it behaves differently from the way it is usually described. Strikethrough is character formatting, so it belongs to the letters rather than to the paragraph. Copy the text into another document and the line comes with it; retype the same words and it does not. That is convenient when you are moving a withdrawn clause into an archive, and a nuisance when you are copying a price list and would rather the old prices arrived clean — in which case Ctrl + \ clears the formatting after the paste.

On a phone the command is missing from Google’s own instructions. The help page for editing and formatting a document has separate tabs for Computer, Android and iPhone & iPad. On the Computer tab the relevant instruction is headed Bold, italicize, or strikethrough text. On both mobile tabs the matching instruction is headed Bold, italicize, or underline text, and strikethrough is not named anywhere in it. The word does appear once on each mobile tab, but inside a passage about the toolbar that carries the Windows, Chrome OS and Mac keyboard shortcuts — desktop text served on a mobile tab. So if you are looking for it on a phone and Google’s steps seem to skip it, they do. All three tabs read on 23 August 2026.

The menu route, the keyboard shortcut and the neighbouring shortcuts are quoted from Google’s own Docs Editors documentation, read on 22 August 2026 and listed below. The reading of what a strikethrough communicates, and the caution about shared documents, are ours.

Not covered here. It will not send you looking for a toolbar button. There is not one, and that is the whole reason this is a question.

It will not treat striking and deleting as interchangeable. One of them tells the reader something the other hides.

And it will not suggest an add-on for something that is one keyboard shortcut. What holds instead is simple: the menu route and the keyboard shortcuts are quoted from Google’s own Docs Editors documentation, with the date each page was read.