How to highlight text in Word: different ways

How to highlight text in Word. When working in a text editor, users often use text selection in Word to perform various operations: changing the formatting of a document, copying all content or a piece of text into this or another document, for moving or deleting.

There are several ways in Microsoft Word that you can select text, depending on your situation. Basically, this is necessary for document formatting purposes. Formatting a font, a paragraph, another part of the text allows you to create unique documents, makes them convenient and increases returns.

Highlighting characters, words, and text fragments is a necessary condition for formatting the text of a document. The ability to quickly and correctly select content will greatly reduce the time it takes to format documents of varying degrees of complexity.

In this article, we will look at different ways to select text in MS Word: how to select all text in Word, select text fragments, paragraphs, sentences, select words and characters in text.

Selecting text with the mouse

The simplest and most common way: direct selection of text using a standard manual mouse. When using this method, the user presses the left mouse button, and then moves the mouse cursor over the text of the document, highlighting individual words, parts of text, paragraphs, other fragments of text, or the entire text.

This is not always convenient, especially when you need to select a large amount of text in a document, so users often use other methods to select text.

How to select all text in Word – 1 way

First, let’s look at how to immediately select all the text in a given document in Word. We use hotkeys to select all text.

This method will allow, using the keys, to select all the text in the Word. To do this, you must perform the following steps:

1. Click anywhere inside the Word document with the mouse pointer.
2. Press the keyboard keys “Ctrl” + “A”.

As a result, all text contained in the document will become selected. Then you can copy or cut this text, change its formatting, or perform other operations.

How to select the entire document – 2 way

To select the text of an entire Word document, you can use the “F8” function key. Do it in the following way:

1. Click inside the document with the mouse cursor.
2. Press the “F8” key 4 times.

Selecting all pages of a Word document – 3 way

The interface of the Word program has built-in elements designed to select objects in a document. In particular, in versions of Word 2019, Word 2016, Word 2013, Word 2010, Word 2007, there is a text selection button that performs all the necessary actions.

Go through the steps:

1. In the Word program window, on the “Home” tab, enter the “Editing” group.
2. Click on the Select button.
3. In the context menu that opens, select Select All.

Selecting the entire text of a Word document – 4 way

Another way to select the entire content of the document:

1. Click anywhere within the body of the document with the mouse pointer.
2. Click 3 times with the right mouse button in the left free part of the sheet (the selection bar located between the text and the edge of the page).

Highlighting words in Word text – 2 ways

To highlight a single word, you can use several simple methods.

1 way:

• It is necessary to double-click on the desired word in the sentence with the mouse cursor.

2 way:

1. Position the mouse cursor in front of the desired word.
2. Press the keys “Ctrl” + “Shift” + “→” (right arrow).

If the mouse pointer is at the end of a word, then the keys “Ctrl” + “Shift” + “←” (left arrow) are used.

How to highlight individual characters in text

Sometimes you need to select not the whole word, but only individual elements: part of the word, symbols, letters, numbers, etc.

If you need to select several characters in one word, use the following option:

1. Move the mouse pointer to the desired location on the document page.
2. After pressing the keys “Ctrl” + “Shift” + “→” (right arrow) or “Ctrl” + “Shift” + “←” (left arrow), the characters located to the right of the mouse pointer, or to the left, located to the end or to the beginning of a single word.

To select individual characters, use another method:

1. Place the mouse cursor in the desired location.
2. Press Shift + → (right arrow) or Ctrl + ← (left arrow) to select a character to the right or left of the mouse pointer.

Highlighting sentences in the text – 2 ways

Often, users need to highlight a single sentence in a Word document.

1 way:

• Press the “Ctrl” key, and then click on the desired sentence in the text of the document.

2 way:

• Click on the sentence with the mouse pointer, press the “F8” key 3 times.

Selecting a line in a document – 2 ways

In some cases, it may be necessary to highlight one line in the text of a Word document.

1 way:

1. Position the mouse in front of the desired line in the document, move the mouse pointer to the left until a right-tilted arrow appears on the mouse cursor.
2. Left click.

2 way:

• Move the mouse cursor to the beginning of the line, press the “Shift” + “End” keys.

How to highlight a paragraph in Word text – 2 ways

Highlighting a paragraph in text is a fairly common operation needed in the process of formatting a Word document.

1 way:

• Click 3 times with the left mouse button on any word in the desired paragraph.

2 way:

1. Place the mouse cursor at the beginning of the paragraph.
2. Press the keyboard shortcut “Ctrl” + “Shift” + “↓” (down arrow).

If you place the mouse cursor at the end of a paragraph, you must use the keys “Ctrl” + “Shift” + “↑” (up arrow).

How to select a piece of text in Word – 2 ways

You may need to select a part of the text in different situations, for example, to select a fragment of text in a document.

1 method is suitable for selecting a large piece of text:

1. In the window of an open document, put the mouse pointer at the beginning of the fragment.
2. Press the “Shift” key.
3. Click on the end of the desired fragment.

Method 2 is suitable if we need to select text in Word to the end of the document:

1. Place the mouse cursor at the beginning of the text fragment.
2. Press the keys “Ctrl” + “Shift” + “End”.

Selecting a fragment in a similar way from bottom to top goes as follows:

1. Click the mouse pointer at the end of the snippet.
2. Press the keyboard keys “Ctrl” + “Shift” + “Home”.

Selecting a vertical area in text

Although such an opportunity is rarely required, nevertheless, there is such a way to select a separate area of ​​text:

• Press the “Alt” key, move the mouse cursor over the text area in the desired directions.

Article Conclusions

Highlighting text in a document is a frequently used feature when working in the Word text editor. Users have to perform some actions in the program: copy, move, delete or format the selected text. Depending on the needs of the user, Microsoft Word has various ways to perform the necessary operations with text: selecting the entire text, individual characters, words, lines, sentences, or document fragments.