Mouse and Keyboard Shortcuts for Highlighting Content in Word and Mail

In a recent post, I detailed 7 Most Commonly-Used Keyboard Shortcuts. This post covers using both the mouse and keyboard to highlight words or phrases that we want to either delete, or copy and save to paste in another place in the same document or email or put in a totally new one.

Clicking, then dragging, the computer mouse over a word or phrase is probably the most common way of capturing the content in Word documents or emails. And there is an even quicker way of gaining the same results, all with mouse clicks only.

Experiment with the following yourself:

1 – Screen shot 2013-06-02 at 5.31.46 PMTo highlight a single word, place your cursor on it and DOUBLE CLICK your mouse.

Screen shot 2013-06-02 at 5.32.26 PM2 – To highlight a paragraph, place your mouse in the body of the paragraph and TRIPLE CLICK your mouse.

Highlighting Section of Copy with Mouse3 – To highlight an even larger segment than a paragraph:

a – Place your cursor at the beginning of the material you want copied.

b – Hold down the shift key.

c – Then place your cursor at the end of the content you want to capture. Click and the whole section will be highlighted.

Release the mouse and you’re ready for whatever your next step is, be it:

d – COPY –   CTRL/CMD C
e – PASTE –  CTRL/CMD V
f – DELETE – CTRL/CMD X

REMEMBER, you can
g – REDO, if you made a mistake – CTRL/CMD Z

REMINDER –  CTRL represents the Control Key on the PC.  CMD, the COMMAND Key on the Mac.

For a refresher explanation on the 7 Keyboard Tips recently covered click on shortcuts.


Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *