Word processing/Selecting text

Word processing

Learn to use a word processor to produce documents for a business or organisation.
An OP Online course from the National Certificate in Computing (Level 2) programme.

About this course  |  Getting started  |  Course schedule  |  Reference  |  Assessment overview  |  Help

Note: When you have finished with this section, you can use your browser's Back button to return to the page you were viewing.

Selecting text is also known as highlighting text. It is used often when using Microsoft Word for tasks such as formatting, deleting, moving or copying text.

When you have text selected you need to be careful that you do not accidentally delete the selected text, this is easily done as if you press any key on the keyboard the selected text will be deleted and replaced with the key you pressed (even the spacebar).

Select a word

Double click.

Select a sentence

Ctrl + Click anywhere in the sentence

Select a line.

Move I-Beam into the left margin of the page beside the paragraph (selection bar) and click

Select a paragraph

Triple click anywhere within the paragraph
or
move I-Beam into the selection bar, point to the paragraph and double click

Select multiple paragraphs at a time

Move I-Beam into the selection bar, point to paragraph and double click. Holding down the left mouse button and dragging down the document selects multiple paragraphs.

Select horizontally

Click and drag across text.

Select vertically

Click and drag down with I-Beam or drag in selection bar.

Select between two points

Click at the beginning, move I-Beam to end point and hold down Shift + Click at the end point.

Select the whole document

Press Ctrl and click in the selection bar or triple click or click the Edit menu then click Select All.

Deselect text selected

Click away from the selected area.