Please Note: This article is written for users of the following Microsoft Word versions: 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003. If you are using a later version (Word 2007 or later), this tip may not work for you. For a version of this tip written specifically for later versions of Word, click here: Overcoming Automatic Word Selection.
Written by Allen Wyatt (last updated May 18, 2020)
This tip applies to Word 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003
Word includes a feature designed to help you select text faster and easier. When you click and drag to select text, Word assumes that if you move the mouse beyond the beginning or end of the current word, you want to start selecting by words. How you turn this capability on and off has been discussed in other issues of WordTips.
Normally this editing feature is quite helpful, but at other times it may complicate exactly what you want to do. For instance, you may want to select the text from the middle to one word to the middle of another. Granted, you could turn off the automatic word selection feature, but that gets bothersome.
Fortunately, by using a little mouse know-how you can inform Word that you only want to select absolute text instead of entire words. As you are moving the mouse, take a look at the behavior of the selection. When the selection jumps out to include the portion of the word you did not want, back up a bit. This causes the selection to shrink to where your cursor is. This works whether you are selecting forwards or backwards in the text.
As an example, imagine you have a sentence "The underwater world is exciting," and want to change it to "The undersea habitat is inviting." You can try to select "water world is exc". If you start at "water", when you drag the selection across to "world" you find the selection increases to include "underwater world."
If you move your cursor backward in Word 97 to the start of "world," you'll notice that the selection shrinks back to "underwater" and you can move the mouse cursor forward to increase your selection letter by letter in the next word.
In later versions of Word the behavior is a bit different (and much more useful). If you move your cursor backward to the start of "world," the selection shrinks back to just "water." In other words, it includes only that part of the text you originally started to select. Now you can move your mouse cursor forward to select the rest of your text, as desired.
WordTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Word training. (Microsoft Word is the most popular word processing software in the world.) This tip (51) applies to Microsoft Word 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003. You can find a version of this tip for the ribbon interface of Word (Word 2007 and later) here: Overcoming Automatic Word Selection.
Do More in Less Time! Are you ready to harness the full power of Word 2013 to create professional documents? In this comprehensive guide you'll learn the skills and techniques for efficiently building the documents you need for your professional and your personal life. Check out Word 2013 In Depth today!
Word natively supports several types of character sets. The most common characters sets are known as ASCII and ANSI ...
Discover MoreNonprinting characters are a great boon when you are editing a document. Turn them on and you can easily see what ...
Discover MoreMost people use the Clipboard to copy and move text in Word. Before the Clipboard, Word used F2 to move text and Shift+F2 ...
Discover MoreFREE SERVICE: Get tips like this every week in WordTips, a free productivity newsletter. Enter your address and click "Subscribe."
2014-09-20 11:54:46
Bob
Hold down the shift key and use the arrow keys to select whatever you want - letter by letter.
Got a version of Word that uses the menu interface (Word 97, Word 2000, Word 2002, or Word 2003)? This site is for you! If you use a later version of Word, visit our WordTips site focusing on the ribbon interface.
Visit the WordTips channel on YouTube
FREE SERVICE: Get tips like this every week in WordTips, a free productivity newsletter. Enter your address and click "Subscribe."
Copyright © 2024 Sharon Parq Associates, Inc.
Comments