Announcements

Well, OK - not quite yet… but I wanted to take a moment to send my good wishes to you anyway.

Also, as you may have already guessed, since New Year's Day is on a Thursday, there won't be another issue of MS Office Tips this week.

So… enjoy your holiday and I'll talk to you again in a week.

~ April

MS Office 101

Fast & Efficient Highlighting

Highlighting in a document can often be a trying event. With the speed of many of today's computers you find yourself zooming past your intended stopping point before you realize you've even begun.

There is more to highlighting than just clicking at your starting point, holding the left mouse button and dragging the highlight through the document (often missing your intended stopping point several times).

The mouse can be quicker and more exact than all that zooming back and forth if you know a few simple tricks.

First trick - "It's all in the click"

When you're trying to highlight text it's all in the number of clicks.

The first click over a word places the cursor in the space below your pointer.

If you double-click a word, the entire word will be highlighted.

If you want to go crazy, a triple-click will highlight the entire paragraph below the pointer. (It's important to note here that the third click must be done rather quickly after the second.) Give it a try and you'll get a feel for how fast it must be done.

Here's a little bonus:

Did you get a little click happy?

Too many clicks and you blew by your intended target?

No problem.

You might have noticed that continuing to click reverses this whole process.

So no sweat - get your clicking finger under control and you'll still get where you meant to be in a matter of seconds.

Second trick - "The Shifty Highlight"

If you have a lot of text to highlight - let's say more than one paragraph where the triple-click is useless - than this one is for you.

1. Place the cursor at the beginning of the text to be highlighted.
2. Scroll to the end of the text that needs to be highlighted. (It's important not to click.)
3. Hold down the Shift key and click at the end of the desired highlighting.

Viola! All the text in between should be highlighted.

No more super speeding windows screaming past your eyes.

No more landing at the top or bottom of the entire document before you can even blink.

It's quick, easy and exact.

Office Tip of the Day

Mouse-less Navigation & Highlighting

Have you ever found yourself editing a document and madly jumping between the mouse and keyboard, making adjustments every few words or lines?

Are you muttering to yourself the whole time that there must be a better way?

Yeah, me too.

Fortunately, for both of us, there is.

One way to speed the process up is to navigate through the document using the Control, Shift, Home, End, Page Up, Page Down and arrow keys to move and highlight.

Different combinations of these keys can quickly transport your cursor to a new location, highlight text and basically make life a lot easier for my readers who prefer to go mouse-less.

To begin, we all know the arrow keys alone will move you through the document one line up and down or one space left and right.

Now let's "supercharge" those arrow keys.

To move from word to word, instead of from space to space, simply use Control + either the left or right arrow. You will jump to the first letter of the word in the direction of the arrow you chose.

To move one paragraph at a time use Control + the up and down arrows. This will move you to the beginning of the next paragraph in whatever direction you chose.

We all know that the Home key will move your cursor to the beginning of the current line. Also, I'm sure we're all aware that the End key moves the cursor to the end of the current line.

The Control key will "supercharge" these little gems too.

Control + Home will move your cursor to the very top of the document.

Control + End will move you to the very end of the document.

Similarly, the Page Up and Page Down keys can be used with the Control key for some quick cursor movements.

Alone, Page Up or Page Down will move the cursor one screen in either direction.

But… add the Control key to either one and you'll be moved to the beginning of either the previous or next page in the document. (Control has you move by pages not screens.)

Now let's talk about highlighting text using the keyboard.

The Shift key is just the thing you're looking for in this case. By using the Shift key + the arrows you will highlight text in whatever direction you've chosen.

I know what you're thinking.

Can you use the Shift key with the Control key options discussed above?

The answer, of course, is yes!

To highlight one word at a time hold down both the Shift and the Control key then use the left or right arrows.

Need one paragraph at a time? Do the same. Hold down the Shift and Control key then use the up or down arrows.

(Basically, I found I could use the Shift key with any of the other combinations, except the Control + Page Up / Down.)

And there you have it.

You're ready to navigate and highlight quicker than quick - no mouse required!

~ April