Then, hold down the key and click a second time at the opposite end of the block. To select a vertical block of text, click at the start of the block.To select a sentence (not just a line), hold down and click once in any place within the sentence.To select the current paragraph, triple-click it.To select the current word, double-click it.More Click Tricks: Combine Word Keyboard Shortcuts & Your Mouse What if you change your mind and you want to turn off the Extend Selection without continuing? Just press to cancel. Just move anywhere to clear the highlight.
The Extend Selection mode turns off as soon as you do an action. Perform the action you want to apply to the selected area such as formatting, cut, copy, etc.Take your time moving to the end of the selection area with your keyboard and/or the mouse.Look in the bottom left corner of the Word status bar (across the bottom of the Word window) for Extend Selection don’t expect anything to flash or pop up.Move to the beginning of the area you want to select.With your mouse, click at the beginning of the text you want to select and then press and hold down and click at the end of the text.Įven better than the key is a little-known selection trick with the function key which “turns on” a selection mode so you don’t have to press and hold down the key while highlighting it in a Word document.Or, hold down + to highlight everything from the current position to the last character on the line.Hold down + to select everything from the insertion point to the beginning of the current line.To move by a screen up or down at a time, hold down the key while pressing the,.To select one character or line at a time, hold down the key while pressing the, ,,.What other keyboard shortcuts and techniques can you use in Word to easily select text, graphics, tables, and other parts of a Word document? + Direction Keys
Working with Word keyboard shortcuts is often a better solution. Sometimes this approach creates problems such as the runaway mouse where we lose exact control over the amount of text we want to select in a Word document. The most common way to select or highlight text is to click and drag your mouse across the text. Almost every editing and formatting task begins by selecting something, that is, to Select Then Do. We select document text to format, copy, move, and delete. Besides entering text, selecting text is probably the most common task for many Microsoft Word documents.