Slowing Down Mouse Selection

Have you ever noticed that there are times that text scrolls way too fast on your screen when you are trying to select it using the mouse? There are many ways you can attempt to slow down the speed at which text scrolls when you are using the mouse to select text. Perhaps the easiest is to use the keyboard in conjunction with the mouse. You do this by clicking the insertion point at the position where you want the selection to start, and then hold down the Shift key while you click where you want the selection to end.

However, if you don't want to use the keyboard, and only rely on the mouse, your options are a bit more limited. Perhaps the best idea is to get a mouse that has a scrolling wheel between the two buttons. Using the wheel you can scroll through a document at the speed you want.

Those who have used Word for a while know that there are actually two mouse-scrolling speeds in Word. To use the slower speed when selecting text, move the mouse down to the horizontal scrollbar area. This scrolls downward at a relatively moderate speed. Moving the mouse below the horizontal scrollbar sends the scrolling into full-speed mode. The "moderate speed" zone for scrolling upward is the ruler bar. The actual differences between these scroll speeds depends on the speed of your computer and how many other tasks your system is running.

The final option to try is to slow down the mouse speed using Windows itself. Display the Control Panel, and then open the Mouse applet. (How you access both the Control Panel and the Mouse applet will vary, depending on your version of Windows.) Within the Mouse applet, make sure the Motion tab is displayed. You can adjust the Pointer Speed setting on this tab so it is more toward the Slow side. When you close the applet by clicking on OK, you should notice that your mouse speed is a bit more manageable.

WordTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Word training. (Microsoft Word is the most popular word processing software in the world.) This tip (1695) 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: Slowing Down Mouse Selection.