I'm the DM of a player who joined about 10 sessions (5 months) ago as a Lore Bard. We just hit Level 9. The player is new to being a spellcaster and just picked Lore because it seemed the most straightforward. However, he's barely used any of his spells or Lore abilities (I didn't even remember he has Cutting Words, he's never used it). He hasn't picked his Magical Secrets spells.

I'm not sure how to help more than I've already helped. He has spell cards organized with what he has learned. We redid his spell selection about 5 sessions ago bc he said he didn't have any spells to use in combat (his spell selection was...not great). We went through them together and picked new spells with a variety of uses (utility, damage, debuffs, aiding allies, etc) and went through the uses of them. That doesn't seem to have helped: sometimes in combat he pulls out a (nonmagical) weapon and uses that instead. I don't want to play someone's character for them so I've held off trying to pick something for him to do every single round of combat. Also with 5 other players I don't have the bandwidth to also strategize for him or remember things like Cutting Words. I'm not sure if he's having fun, he seems kind of bored during combat.

When I bring up ideas to make things more fun for him, could switching bard subclass to Swords help? He might like using less spells and being more of a swashbuckler, but I'm not sure how complicated the flourishes are to use for a newer player.