Select Text Vertically in Microsoft Word
If you often need to use Microsoft Word for writing documents, you've probably come across the situation where you needed to delete the beginning of each line in a list, especially if you are reformatting a document or dealing with text pasted from another source.
Did you realize you can select text vertically? All you have to do is hold down the Alt key, and you can make a vertical selection.
For example, I want to delete the first two words from each item in this list, so I hold down the Alt key and make a selection around the area:
Now I can cut, copy, or just delete the selection.
You can make a vertical selection anywhere in the document, not just with lists. It's probably more useful when dealing with a similar scenario.
The Geek is the founder of How-To Geek and a geek enthusiast. When he's not coming up with great how-to articles, he's probably writing at his personal blog. This article was written on 01/4/08 and tagged with: Microsoft Office
Nice ! .. Thanks for the tip .
I am using Office 2007 and this does not appear to work. Holding down the Alt key opens a Reference dialog box. Is there some setting that needs to be changed?
Oh, that rocks! I've been copying stuff to Textpad forever to do that kind of block selection.
Don't you mean Shift + Alt? Just holding Alt does not work for me with Word 07.
"I am using Office 2007 and this does not appear to work. Holding down the Alt key opens a Reference dialog box. Is there some setting that needs to be changed?
MadScientist Identicon Icon MadScientist on January 4, 2008 10:26 am"
i just tried it on Office 2007 and it works fine…even the tutorial was made on Office 2007! just keep holding down the Alt key and drag. ignore everything else.
"I am using Office 2007 and this does not appear to work. Holding down the Alt key opens a Reference dialog box. Is there some setting that needs to be changed?
MadScientist Identicon Icon MadScientist on January 4, 2008 10:26 am"
"i just tried it on Office 2007 and it works fine…even the tutorial was made on Office 2007! just keep holding down the Alt key and drag. ignore everything else. "
w0zzy on January 4, 2008 11:41 am
I just tried again using a different document and it worked fine. I tried the other document and got the same reference box so the issue is with the one particular document.
Thanks, this is a great tip!!
Can you do this in OpenOffice as well?
It does not work because I and many others use Alt + left click in activation of 1-click-Answers from Answers.com. But it did work i MS Word 2007, as soon as I changed that to Control + left click (or something else). However, not in Open Office.
omg! i cannot tell you how many times i wished i could do this! thank you thank you thank you!
This is definitely a good idea. Thanks for the tips.
"I just tried again using a different document and it worked fine. I tried the other document and got the same reference box so the issue is with the one particular document."
MadScientist on January 4, 2008 1:10 pm
Experienced that too. I wonder why though.
man if there was a way to do this in notepad though, i program hardware in notepad because less overhead than word.
Works even in MS Word 2002. (now you know that i am using the old version).
This doesn't work in a table, though. Oddly, it makes a "Research" window open instead. Anybody know how to do it?