Highlighting Text In Microsoft Word
Before you can edit or format your text, you need to select it. Selecting your text is a way of telling Microsoft Word that you want to work with a certain piece of text. (Selecting is also referred to as highlighting.)
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 any highlight, click somewhere in your text. You will then see the flashing cursor appear at the point where you click.
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 lots of programs and lots of environments. It can also be accessed via the keyboard using Control-A: that is to say, hold down the Control key while typing “A”.
As well as highlighting character by character, Word also allows you to select complete lines. To do this, move the cursor into the left margin and you’ll notice that it changes to an arrow pointing to the right. When the cursor changes, simply click to highlight a single line or click and drag to highlight several lines.
Another way of highlighting text is to click multiple times. To highlight a word, double click on the word; to highlight an entire paragraph, click three times on 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 select text without the mouse, use the arrow keys on your keyboard to move the cursor to the point where you want your selection. Next, press the Shift key together with one of the arrow keys. To select character by character, use the right or left arrow depending on the direction in which you want to move. To select line by line press the down or up arrow.
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 making selections. For example, if the cursor is positioned in the middle of a line, pressing Shift and Home will highlight from that position to the start of the line while pressing Shift and End will highlight from the cursor position to the end of the line. Holding down Control and Shift while pressing the right arrow will highlight from the cursor position to the start of the document. Control, Shift and End will highlight from the cursor position to the end of the document.
Filed under: Training