Selecting Text

Certainly the most fundamental of Office activities, it's amazing how each of the Office applications handles text selection shortcuts so differently.

When you select text with a mouse, the following shortcuts apply:

• Double-clicking a word selects the word in all Office applications. In Outlook, Word, PowerPoint, and FrontPage, double-clicking also selects the word's trailing space(s), if any; in Excel and Access, it does not. That can be confusing when switching between applications.

• Triple-clicking selects an entire paragraph, but only in Outlook, Word, PowerPoint, and FrontPage. Triple-clicking in Excel does not select an entire cell.

• Word enables you to move your mouse pointer to the left margin, where it will turn into an arrow pointed up and to the right. With the pointer in that state, you can click once to select the current line; twice to select the paragraph; or three times to select the entire document. FrontPage behaves similarly, except triple-clicking selects only the line. Oddly, Outlook does not have a similar capability.

• In addition, Word, Outlook, and PowerPoint automatically force you to select entire words when you click and drag over more than one word. All three applications enable you to turn this feature off using the Edit tab on the Options dialog box (choose Tools, Options to get there); clear the box marked When Selecting, Automatically Select Entire Word.

→ To learn more ways you can customize Word, see "Customizing the Word Interface".

• When working with text boxes in the drawing layer, Office takes on the clicking conventions of the underlying application: Triple-clicking in a paragraph in an Excel text box does nothing; the same action in Word or PowerPoint selects the entire paragraph.

Many advanced Word users—especially proficient typists—prefer to use the keyboard to select characters and words. By memorizing a few simple commands and avoiding the round trip to the mouse, they can plow through text much faster. Keyboard-selection techniques stay fairly uniform throughout Office (see Table 4.2).

In addition, Outlook and Word have two important shortcuts that experienced users will want to memorize (see Table 4.3). These shortcuts come in handy when you're trying to select blocks of text in large documents, "from this point to the beginning" or "from this point to the end." No menu or toolbar button equivalents exist for either.

In Outlook and Word you can select discontiguous characters—that is, characters that are not next to each other—by holding down the Ctrl key as you select. In Excel you can select discontiguous cells the same way. In PowerPoint, you're allowed to select discontiguous slides. But you can't select discontiguous text in Excel, PowerPoint, or FrontPage.