If you spend a lot of time in Microsoft Word (or any other word processor), it’s high time you learned how to select text using only your keyboard. Why? Because it saves you having to reach for your mouse and lets you use other keyboard shortcuts more effectively. Here’s how:
- Place your cursor at the start (or end) of the text you want to select.
- Press and hold the Shift key, then tap the left or right arrow key repeatedly. You can also tap the up and down arrows to select a line of text at a time. Press Ctrl-Shift to select an entire word with each press of the left/right arrows or entire paragraphs with up/down.
Pretty easy, huh? Practice this a few times and before long, it’ll become second nature. And, of course, once you’ve selected your text, you can take advantage of other commonly used shortcuts, like Ctrl-B for bold text, Ctrl-C for copy, Ctrl-I for italics, and so on.
