Selecting text
To change or delete a chunk of text, you also can select that text first. To select text, do one of the
following:
Drag the mouse pointer through the text you want to select.
Position the blinking cursor to the start or end of the text you want to select and then hold
down the Shift key while you press the arrow keys to extend the selection.
In some cases, you can select all the text in a text box by clicking the label next to the
text box.
Select a single word by double-clicking that word.
The selected text will be highlighted somehow, typically as white letters against a blue background.
Once you select a chunk of text, you can
Press Delete (Del) to delete the selected text.
Or, start typing new text.
When you type new text, whatever you type replaces what was previously selected.
Knowing these simple techniques can actually save you quite a bit of time. When you’re browsing the
World Wide Web with Microsoft Internet Explorer, for example, you often need to type in some fairly
lengthy URLs, such as http://www.microsoft.com. Because so many URLs are alike, however,
you can save a lot of time by selecting just the text you want to change. To change that Microsoft URL
to http://www.coolnerds.com, for example, you could just drag the mouse pointer through
microsoft to select that chunk of text. Then type coolnerds to replace the selected text, ending up with
http://www.coolnerds.com.