Welcome back.
We’re in module 3 and we’re talking about character formatting in this particular module.
Now we’re down on section 2 where I want to talk to you a little bit about selecting
text.
You may have seen text before this highlighted.
Well we actually call it selecting.
Why would you want to select text?
Well we have a little saying that goes like this.
If you want to effect it you’ve got to select it.
So think about this.
What if you have a document and you’ve got one word in the document that you want to
make a bold?
How would it know which word to make bold unless you had it selected?
So what we’re going to do is go through several different selecting techniques that
will help you out and if you don’t remember them all that’s certainly okay.
Just pick out two or three that’ll really be helpful to you and then that way it’ll
make life a lot easier as you go along.
So let me go ahead and flip over to the exercise and I’ll show you how to select your text.
Before I get started let me just mention that I’ve made a list of all these selecting
techniques for you.
Just look for it wherever you see the Q&A and then you can actually print that out if
you’d like and follow along.
Or if you want to just keep it for reference that’s fine too.
Let me address the most common selecting technique and that is clicking wherever you want to
start your selection and dragging across the text like this.
That is certainly okay to do.
But a lot of time what happens is you get an extra word or you didn’t get everything
you wanted and so it’s not always the best way to select your text.
Just so you’ll know, whenever you have text selected you’re going to see this appear
as well and that’s just a quick way to get to some formatting options that we’re going
to be talking about a little bit later.
Notice they’re here but they’re also way up here.
This can be turned off in the Options, just so you’ll know.
Deselecting means clicking away from your selection.
And notice it’s not selected anymore.
The next one I want to mention is selecting one word.
To select one word find the word you’d like to select and double click in the middle of
it.
That’s all you have to do.
And that word is now selected.
I’ll deselect that one.
Another one that’s very helpful is selecting a sentence.
Now remember a sentence ends with a period.
So I’m going to go down here and get this one.
I’m going to hold the Control key and click anywhere in that sentence one time and notice
that sentence is now selected.
Be careful when you see a sentence like this because this says the goal of Burke Properties,
Inc., well there’s a period there so that’s not really a sentence.
But if I hold Control it’s going to stop there because it sees the period at the end.
Let’s talk about selecting a line.
If you put your mouse all the way to the left in the margin area this area is called the
Selection Bar.
If your mouse is in the selection bar it will look like this arrow versus how it looks like
an I if you’re not in the selection bar.
But if you’re in the selection bar and you point to the line you want and click one time
it selects the whole line.
And if you need multiple lines click and drag straight down.
That is a way to select a paragraph.
Some other ways to select paragraphs would be if you’re in that selection bar you can
double click and you’ll select the paragraph.
Or if you’re in the middle of the paragraph tripe click, three times, and that’s another
way to select a paragraph.
So whatever works for you.
How about this one?
I’d like to select from one point to another and it’s not necessarily a sentence or a
paragraph.
It’s just one point to another.
Click where you’d like to start, hold the Shift key and click where you’d like to
end.
Shift always selects between two points.
Click where you want to start, hold Shift and click where you’d like to end.
By the way, what if you needed to add this word Friends?
You forgot it.
All you have to do is hold the Shift key and hit your right arrow and see how you add to
your existing selection?
Or the left arrow key on the keyboard will take away from your selection.
Up and down will get another paragraph at a time.
What if you needed multiple areas selected that aren’t adjacent to each other?
All you’re going to do is hold the Control key.
So I’m going to select the first area, I’m going to hold Control and I’ll go grab a
second area there and I can grab a third one is I want.
But as long as I’m holding Control I can select multiple areas.
The last one I want to mention is selecting your whole entire document and we’ve already
talked about this one.
But if you hold down the Control key and hit the letter A that will select everything.
That’s your Control-A, Select All.
Notice also another way to select everything is right up here you’ll Select and it says
Select All and that’s under the Home tab.
So just know there’s multiple ways to select your text and whatever works for you is going
to be fine.
Remember if you want to effect it you’ve got to select it.
So make that a habit to select in any program that you work in.
Now that we’ve got that down pat let’s go ahead and start with cut, copy and paste
over in section 3.