Making Selections In Microsoft Word 2007

by Andrew Whiteman

Before you can edit or format your text, you need to highlight it. Highlighting your text is a way of telling Microsoft Word that you want to work with a certain piece of text. (Highlighting is also referred to as selecting.)

The easiest way of selecting text is to position the cursor where you want your selection to start, click and hold the mouse button down and drag to the position where you want to end the selection. It is not necessary to drag across every single line that you want to select. It is sufficient to move in a straight line from start to the finish.

To deselect your text and remove the highlight, click anywhere in your text. The flashing cursor will then reappear.

Another simple way of highlighting text is to select the entire document. This is done with the "Select All" command. In Microsoft Word 2007, the "Select All" command is found in the "Editing" group of the "Home" Tab of the Word Ribbon. Click on the "Select" menu and choose "Select All".

The "Select All" command is found in many programs and many environments. It can also be accessed from the keyboard using Control-A: just hold down the Control key while typing "A".

As well as selecting characters by dragging across them, Word also allows you to select whole lines. To do this, place the cursor in the left margin and you'll notice that it changes to an arrow pointing to the right. Once the cursor changes, you can simply click once to select a single line or click and drag to select multiple lines.

Another way of selecting text is to click multiple times. To select a word, double-click on the word; to select an entire paragraph, click three times within the paragraph.

It is also possible to select text using the mouse and keyboard. This normally involves using the Shift key. One such technique is click then Shift-click. First, you click to position the cursor at the start of the text to be highlighted; next hold down the Shift key and click to mark the point where you want the highlighting to end. All the text between the two clicks will now be selected.

To highlight text without the mouse, use the cursor keys on your keyboard to position the cursor where you want your highlight to begin. Next, press Shift in conjunction with one of the cursor keys. To highlight character by character, press the right or left cursor key depending on the required direction. To highlight line by line press the down or up cursor key.

The Shift key can also be used together with the Control key. For example, if you hold down Control and Shift then press the right arrow, you will highlight word by word instead of character by character. Similarly, if you hold down Control and Shift and press the down cursor key, you will highlight paragraph by paragraph.

The Home and End keys can also be used in this context. For example, if the cursor is positioned in the middle of a line, pressing Shift and Home will select from that position to the start of the line while pressing Shift and End will select from the cursor position to the end of the line. Holding down Control and Shift and pressing the right arrow will select from the cursor position to the start of the document. Control, Shift and End will select from the cursor position to the end of the document.

About the Author:

The The writer of this article is a trainer and developer with Macresource Computer Solutions, a UK IT training company offering Microsoft Word training courses at their central London training centre.