Windows

Vertical Text Selection In Word

Posted by on Mar 14, 2007 | 17 Comments

Here is a nifty tip for selecting text in Word that many people don’t know about. Normally when you select text in Word, you do so horizontally, from right to left or left to right. However, what do you do if the text you need to select is vertical; for example, what if you want to bold the first word on each line? You can select and bold each word individually or you can make a vertical selection.

To make a vertical selection, hold down the ALT key as you drag the mouse pointer to select the text. If you want to select the first word on each line, hold down the ALT key and drag the mouse pointer up or down to highlight each word.

When you’re using this tip, remember that you can make a vertical selection anywhere in your document.

[tags]vertical text selection, word, office[/tags]

  • Jisp

    Thank you for that tip. I had read that method many years ago and forgotten it. It is something I will use from time to time instead of doing it the ‘hard way’.

  • RamseyLE

    When i try this it opens the Research Window and looks up the word I am pointing at. Am I not holding my “mouth” right? :-)

  • Roy Merritt

    I normally have been skipping your articles since you are going so heavy into Vista, but I did like the vertical MS Word selection tip.

  • Sean

    Is this only certain versions of word? I tried in Word 2002 and holding alt down did absolutely nothing

  • http://www.internet.com.tr/atschikura Atschikura

    I tried this in Word 2007 and working perfect but could not manage to have the first words selected. Maybe due to my usage of laptop mouse pad.

    By the way, I tried to find a way to reach Diana and the Lockergnome team to have their permission to translate this tip into Turkish (no email and contact forms found unfortunately). The translation is accessible at http://www.internet.com.tr/atschikura/6181 and credits were given at the end of the translation.

    Please let me know if you think I break the copyright clauses of Lockergnome.

  • http://www.bullfrey.com/blog/2007/03/top-tip-to-help-import-lists-into-your.html Richard Grant

    Great tip! I very often work with lists of people that I want to import into a database after a seminar or conference, and a lot of the time it’s an unformatted mess that would otherwise need to be cut and pasted.

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  • http://blogs.educationau.edu.au/tcotton/ Tom Cotton

    To achieve the same thing via the cursor keys instead of mouse:
    CTRL+SHIFT+F8 “Extend a selection or block (then press an arrow key).”

    It may surprise some people to know but that feature has been in since at least Word for DOS 5.5 days.

  • Rick Hahn

    I did not know word could do that.
    The last time I saw that feature was in an old DOS work processor called Sprint.

    WOW Thanks

    Any more stuff like that!

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  • Uttam Kumar

    According ot me if a person can think then after the prepairing he can do.

    Every thing is possible for me

    Thanks & Best regards,
    Uttam Kumar

  • Robert

    Here is a situation I hope you can solve for me:
    In Word, when selecting text from page 1 to page 4, the scroll speed is too fast to accurately/sanely select the text that you want. The process doesn’t involve the use of the scroll wheel, sidebar, or the arrow keys. Instead, I am moving my mouse cursor over the bottom of the page’s border.
    Here is my question:
    Is there anyway to slow down the speed by which the page scrolls while selecting text with only the movement of your mouse?

  • David Grainger

    Anyone know how to teh reverse and paste vertical text inopt an existing document list?

  • http://www.lunawebs.com Shad Vick

    This doesn’t work in Word 2007 anymore – only in previous versions. I used to use this all the time – then upgraded to Vista with Word 2007 and no luck. When you hold alt +cursor to select it now pulls up a window on the right that pulls up the “research” window. Any help appreciated.

  • Rasik

    THank You. it helped me a lot.