Selecting Text

You can select one or more characters to delete, replace, copy, cut, or format. Selected text appears with a colored background or in inverse type.

Tips

• There are many ways to select text. This section provides just a few of the most useful methods.

• Word enables you to select multiple blocks of text. To do this, hold down while selecting each block, using any of the techniques discussed in this chapter.

To select text by dragging

1.	Position the mouse I-beam pointer at the beginning of the text.
2.	Press the mouse button down and drag to the end of the text you want to select (Figure 41). Figure 41. Drag over text to select it.
3.	Release the mouse button. All characters between the starting and ending points are selected.

Tips

• This is the most basic text selection technique. It works for any amount of text.

• By default, Word automatically selects entire words when you drag through more than one word. To disable this feature, choose Word > Preferences (Figure 29), click Edit in the Preferences dialog that appears (Figure 42), and turn off the check box for When selecting, automatically select entire word.

  Figure 42. The Edit options of the Preferences dialog.

  
  
  

To select text by clicking

Click as instructed in Table 2 to select specific amounts of text.

Table 2. Techniques for Selecting Text by Clicking

To select:	Do this:
a word	double-click the word
a sentence	hold down and click in the sentence
a line	click in the selection bar to the left of the line (Figure 43)
a paragraph	triple-click in the paragraph or double-click in the selection bar to the left of the paragraph
the document	hold down and double-click in the selection bar to the left of any line
any text	position the insertion point at the beginning of the text, then hold down and click at the end of the text

Figure 43. Click in the selection bar beside a line to select the line.

Tips

• You can combine techniques in Table 2 with dragging to select multiple lines and paragraphs.

• When you select an entire word by double-clicking it, Word also selects any spaces after it.

To make multiple selections

1.	Use any technique to select text.
2.	Hold down while making another selection (Figure 44). Figure 44. Here's an example of two non-contiguous selections.
3.	Repeat step 2 until all selections are made.

Tip

• This ability to select non-contiguous blocks of text makes it easy to format multiple blocks of text at once.

To select the contents of a document

Choose Edit > Select All (Figure 45) or press .

Figure 45. The Edit menu.