Another annoying thing about Word, fixed
Apr 30th, 2010 by handolio
It’s possible to suffer a minor irritation for so long that it becomes part of the scenery. Even though, deep down, it still annoys you, it blends into the background chatter of irritants. Such is the case with the way Word handles the selection of text.
Recently, as I’ve gradually found the options that make Word act like a grown-up word processor, this had started to get annoying again: if you’ve got a netbook or anything else with a smallish trackpad, it’s easy to place the cursor at the beginning of your selection before accidentally flicking it the wrong way – at which point Word will include the word before the one you wanted to start at and you’ll need to begin the selection again.
Narg.
Anyway, after some self-editing made more tedious by the problem I was inspired to look for an option. To be fair, it’s an easy one to find:
-Click Word’s nameless round button
-At the bottom of the menu that appears click Word Options
-Click Advanced in the left-hand pane
-Un-tick the second option: When selecting, automatically select entire word
-Click OK to save the change
You can do the same thing for Outlook 2007 by following the above instructions from an email you’re reading or composing, but choose ‘Editor Options’ rather than ‘Word Options’.
Selection shortcuts
The downside of making this change is that you have to be slightly more accurate when marking the start of your selection. The upside, however, is that the application won’t fuck it up for you when you do get it right.
No doubt many users prefer this to be the default behaviour, but there are other keyboard shortcuts for selections that are easier to use in practice, particularly where it’s hard to give accurate mouse inputs. Moreover, these should work in all Windows applications:
Shift and cursor keys – select text
Control, Shift and left/right cursor key – select text one word at a time
Shift and page up/down – select text in big fat lumps
Control and ‘a’ – select entire document/dialogue/element (depending where the cursor is)
