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.
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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?
excellent ..i was searching this tip from long ago
I have been researching this tip from many website. Everyone gives Alt+mouse selection which selects the text, but what is the use as, when you release the mouse button, selection is gone and it opens a research window in word2003.
.
Why don’t anyone gives a full tip that how to keep selection and then apply formatting or doing copy, cut etc.
Or may be we are just being fooled by an incomplete tip. I hate it
Hemant, this tip is as complete as it can be. Alt+mouse selection selects an area, and releasing the mouse and/or Alt key leaves the selection. If it is not working for you, it may be that you are clicking again after selecting the text, while still holding down Alt, or something else may be impacting your document. Note that this does not work within a table, and I would guess there are probably other special objects within Word that would cause it to not work, as well, but without testing, I couldn’t say what those are. Alt+Click is the shortcut for the Research function (you can see the shortcut to the right of the Research option on the Tools menu). There might be some way to change this, or as someone else suggested, it may be that you have another program that is interpreting the Alt+mouse selection. One shortcoming of this feature is that the selection does get lost after you do anything with the text (like change the formatting), which can be a problem if you need to make multiple format changes.
This is brilliant!!!! I have a degree level qualification for use of word and didn’t even know that you could do that – love it!!!!
))))
PS: w0zzy EMAIL ME PLZ