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 selecting text is to select the entire document. This is done via the “Select All” command. In Word 2007, the “Select All” command is found in the “Editing” section of the “Home” Tab. Click to display 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 highlighting characters by dragging across them, Word also allows you to select whole lines. To do this, position the cursor in the left margin and you’ll notice that the cursor changes to an arrow pointing to the right. Once the cursor has changed, you can simply click to select a single line or click and drag to select several lines.
Another way of highlighting text is to click several times. To highlight a single word, double click on the word; to highlight an entire paragraph, click three times anywhere in the paragraph.
It is also possible to select text via the keyboard. Most of these techniques involve using the Shift key. One popular technique is click followed by Shift-click. First, click to set the start of the area that needs to be selected; next hold down the Shift key and click to set the point where you want the selection to end. All the text between the two clicks will then 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 in conjunction with the Control key. For example, if you hold down Control and Shift and press the right arrow, you will select word by word instead of character by character. Similarly, if you hold down Control and Shift and press the down arrow, you will select paragraph by paragraph.
The Home and End keys can also be utilised in this context. For example, if the cursor is in the middle of a line, pressing Shift and Home will select from the cursor position to the start of the line while pressing Shift and End will select from the cursor position to the end of the current line. Holding down Control and Shift and pressing the right cursor key will select from the cursor position to the start of the document. Control, Shift and End will select from the current position to the end of the document.
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