College IT Courses

Before you can edit or format a block of text in Microsoft Word 2007, you need to select it. Selecting the text is a way of telling Word that you want to work with a certain piece of text. (Selecting is also referred to as Highlighting.)

The simplest way of highlighting text is to position the cursor where you want to start highlighting, click and hold the mouse button down and drag to the position where you want to end the highlight. It is not necessary to drag across every single line that you want to highlight. It’s sufficient to go in a straight line from the start to the finish. To deselect your text and remove the highlight, click anywhere in your text. The flashing cursor will then reappear.

Select All

Another way of highlighting text is to click multiple times. To highlight a word, double-click on the word. To highlight an entire paragraph, click three times on the paragraph. To highlight the entire document, click three times in the left margin.

Selecting all of your text

Another simple way of highlighting text is to select the entire document. This is done with the Select All command. In Microsoft Word 2007 the Select All command is found in the Editing group of the Home Tab of the Ribbon. Click to obtain the drop-down menu; click on Select and then choose Select All. The Select All command is found in lots of programs and lots of environments. It can also be accessed via the keyboard using Control-a: that is to say, hold down the Control key while typing the letter “a”.

Multiple clicks

Another way of highlighting text is to click multiple times. To highlight a word, double-click on the word. To highlight an entire paragraph, click three times on the paragraph. To highlight the entire document, click three times in the left margin.