When you want to make changes in a large amount of text in your document, you must fist designate the text by selecting it. Some folks call it highlighting. Selected text appears as white letters on a back background. The text that is selected is the part that will be affedted by commands or operations that you put into play.
When you are editing a great deal of text, you do not want to press Backspace or Delete repeatedly. Instead, you can select the text and click Delete to erase the entire block at once. You also need to select text before you can copy or move it.
With the Mouse:
- Place the mouse pointer to the left of the text that you want to select.
Press and hold the left mouse button as you drag across or down to cover the entire selection of text.
With the Keyboard:
- Place the insertion point to the left of the text that you want to select.
- Hold down the Shift key and press the Arrow keys or the Page Up, Page Down, Home, or End key to cover the entire section of text.
Be careful, because when you have whole sections of text selected, any key you type will replace the entire selection. If this should happen, simply click the Undo button or click on Edit | Undo.
When you make a mistake in typing you can easily backspace, for for a large error, such as deleting an entire block of text by mistake, you need to use th Undo feature. Undo brings back the text that you thought you had lost forever. Howevr, if you change your mind and want to delte it again, you can simply click the Redo button.
MS Word keeps a record of opereations you have performed and you can choose to undo the last one or as many as you like, in reverse order.
As soon as a block of text is selected, you can rearrange it. You will use the Cut, Copy and Paste commands in conjunction with the Office Clipboard to duplicate or move the text to a new location.
You will use the copy and paste process to duplicate a block of text and put the copy in another location. Other times you may want to remove the text from where it is situated and put it elsewhere. This is when you use the cut and paste technique.
Another method to move text which is perhaps easier to use than the cut and paste method, is the drag and drop method. You do not have to choose menus, click buttons or press keys. All you have to do is drag with the mouse.
Follow the steps below but be careful and make sure you use your mouse expertly to obtain the results you want.
- Select the text you want to move.
- Move the mouse pointer over the selected text until it turns into a left pointing arrow.
- Hold down the left mouse button, and you will see the mouse pointer change shape – now it contains a rectangle next to the arrow. You will also see a gray insertion point inside the text.
- Drag the mouse pointer until you see the gray insertion point move to the destination where you would like to insert the text.
- Release the mouse button.