Selecting Text

Tips, Tricks, and Answers

The following articles are available for the 'Selecting Text' topic. Click the article's title (shown in bold) to see the associated article.

Automatically Selecting Words
When editing a document, Word normally selects entire words as you use the mouse to select text. This tip explains why this occurs and how you can change this behavior, if you desire.

Easily Extending Selections
The F8 key is a shortcut that allows you to turn on Word's extend mode. This mode is used to "extend" the text being selected. It is not the only way to select text, but it offers benefits that other selection methods do not offer. Here is one of the handy benefits of using the extend mode.

Quickly Selecting Text
You can select huge blocks of text quickly and easily by using the mouse. As described in this tip, you only need to click at the starting point of the block and then hold down the Shift key as you click and the ending point.

Replacing Text Selections
By default, Word uses what you type to replace anything you had selected when you started typing. If you don't like that approach to editing, you can change Word's behavior by making just one little change in the Options dialog box.

Selecting a Group of Words
Want to select a chunk of text in a document? Perhaps the easiest way to do this involves using the mouse in conjunction with the keyboard, as described in this tip.

Selecting a Line of Text
Many word processing programs include commands that allow you to select a line of text. Word doesn't, but you can use the mouse to select lines of text, and it is probably easier than you think.

Selecting a Sentence
You can select entire sentences using your mouse, if you first hold down the Ctrl key. This tip explains some of the ins and outs of using this handy editing technique.

Selecting a Text Block
Everyone knows how to select text; especially if that text is sequential, such as a few words or a sentence. An often overlooked method of text selection is to select non-sequential text. You do this using the Ctrl+Shift+F8 shortcut, as described in this tip.

Selecting a Word
Selecting text is a critical skill to possess when you want to work with a Word document. This tip explains how you can select entire words with just a quick double-click of the mouse.

Selecting an Entire Paragraph
Paragraphs are an elemental building block for documents. This tip explains the different ways you can select entire paragraphs of text.

Selecting an Entire Section
Documents can be subdivided into sections, with each of them formatted differently. If you want to select all the text in a particular section, then you can follow the steps outlined in this tip, or create your own shortcut using the included macro code.

Selecting Sentences with VBA
Need to select an entire sentence at once? You can do so by creating a short macro that does the task for you, or you can assign shortcut keys to some built-in Word commands that aren't normally accessible.

Selecting Sentences with WordBasic
A WordBasic macro that allows you to step through a document, sentence by sentence.

Selecting the Entire Document with the Mouse
Want a quick way to select your entire document without taking your hand off of the mouse? Try clicking away using the technique described in this tip.

Using ASCII and ANSI Characters
Word natively supports several types of character sets. The most common characters sets are known as ASCII and ANSI characters. This tip explains what these are and how to use them in Word.