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 simplest way of highlighting text is to position the cursor where you want to start highlighting, click and hold the mouse button down and drag to the position where you want to end the highlight. It is not essential to drag across every single line that you want to highlight. It is sufficient to go in a straight line from the 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 character by character, Word also allows you to select complete lines. To do this, move the cursor into the left margin and you’ll notice that it changes to an arrow pointing to the right. When the cursor changes, simply click to highlight a single line or click and drag to highlight several lines.
Another way of highlighting text is to click multiple times. To highlight a word, double click on the word; to highlight an entire paragraph, click three times on 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 cursor keys on your keyboard to position the cursor where you want your selection to start. Next, press the Shift key in conjunction with one of the cursor keys. To highlight character by character, press the right or left arrow depending on the direction that you want to move. To select line by line press the down arrow or up arrow.
The Shift key can also be used together with the Control key. For example, if you hold down Control and Shift then press the right arrow, you will highlight word by word instead of character by character. Similarly, if you hold down Control and Shift and press the down cursor key, you will highlight paragraph by paragraph.
The Home and End keys can also be used in this context. For example, if the cursor is positioned in the middle of a line, pressing Shift and Home will select from that position to the start of the line while pressing Shift and End will select from the cursor position to the end of the line. Holding down Control and Shift and pressing the right arrow will select from the cursor position to the start of the document. Control, Shift and End will select from the cursor position to the end of the document.
