Microsoft Word Basics: How to Select Text Effectively

Using Microsoft Word allows you to create highly effective documents that are professional and pristine. However many users of this powerful application still find the simple task of selecting text challenging, especially in long documents.

In this article I am going to set out some basic rules for selecting text and also a simple way to stop your selection from taking off on you. This technique is called Shift and Click. Lets begin.

Understanding the Golden Rule

Once you have created your document you are going to find that you will want to change the text, objects, photographs and many other elements. This is part and parcel of creating word documents. However there is a single golden rule that you must always follow and that is:

You must always select what it is you want to change before you make the change

If you dont do this you will find that the wrong object will be changed. The simple rule of thumb is to Select Then Do. If you do this you, you will always change the right thing.

Select Text with the Mouse

The most popular technique for selecting text in Microsoft Word is by using the Mouse. The method for selecting text using the mouse is to first position the insertion point at the start of your selection and then hold down your left mouse button and keep it held down whilst you drag the mouse to where you want the selection to finish.

Microsoft has provided a special tool to help you with selecting text with the mouse technique called the AutoSelect or automatic word selection. Essentially what happens is that as you drag through the first couple of characters in the word, the application automatically selects the whole word and the space after it.

One of the issues with that is that if you dont want to select the whole word, what do you do? Well its quite simple, drag through the word to the next and then drag back over the word. You will notice when you do this, that the selection will be deselected one character at a time. If you want Automatic word selection to be re-enabled just drag forward and once you go to the next word it automatically enables.

An alternative way to select just one character at a time is to hold down the ALT key before you start dragging. If you want to turn Automatic Word Selection off permanently then you need to select the Tools menu and then select the Options command. From the Options dialogue box select the Edit Tab and then deselect the When selecting, Automatically select entire word check box.

Shift and Click

One of the problems with the mouse dragging technique is that in a large document the selection may take off. The later the generation of computer the further down the document would scroll. Some in the industry call this problem Thermal Runaway. To overcome this problem you could use the Shift and Click method that provides more control over the selection.

The first step in using this method is to position the insertion point at the start of the selection. Then move your mouse pointer to the end of the selection and then hold down the Shift key and then press the left mouse button once.

Even when using this method you should note that the Automatic Word Selection function occurs. That is, even if you only position the point half way through a word the whole word will be selected.

The Shift and Click technique stops you from losing control of your selection and ensures that you get the desired selection.

If you would like to learn Microsoft Word in detail simply goto our website Microsoft Word Training. We also have cheatsheets to help you learn your shortcuts at Microsoft Word Shortcuts.