Discussion on:

15 ways to select text in a Word document

Just I can say you "Thank you."

I love using alt-shift-up/down
In one keystroke it selects and moves the current paragraph (or table row) - always impressive!
(alt-shift-right/left promotes or demotes one heading level)

You forgot to mention selection by F8:
pressed twice, it selects the word around (or touching) the cursor;
pressed thrice, it selects the whole sentence:
pressed four times it selects the whole paragraph;
pressed five times, it selects the whole document.
To escape selecting mode, press.... Esc.
P.

After god knows how many years I never realised you could do this with F8 in Word (and other Office applications). This post just resolved one of the single most annoying faux-sticky keys issues ever to annoy me. Thanks.

You also forgot to mention margin+double click to select a paragraph and margine +triple click to select the whole document

This will select everything from your cursor to the beginning of the document or the end of the document (respectivly).

To highlight columns that are not in a table within a document, use [Ctrl]+[Alt] and drag to highlight columns. Works great when cutting and pasting between Word and Excel!

It is very convenient to simply select blocks, if that is sufficient for your purposes. But why not go one step further, and select very precisely, perhaps only a fraction of a sentence.
You then mark a portion of text beginning with an individual word and ending with another individual word. Start by double-clicking the first word, and then proceed like in *Click+[Shift]+click* above. [This is in fact just a small variation of *Click+[Shift]+click* above.]
This happens to be the technique that has been most useful to me in the past.

If you know the key combination to move the Insertion point, you can generally select (highlight) the text by using the same key combination while holding down the SHIFT key. For example, CTRL+HOME moves the Insertion point to the beginning of the document, and SHIFT+CTRL+HOME selects the text from the insertion point to the beginning of the document.

Move the mouse pointer pass left margin (left indent) after mouse pointer change direction, point to a line, single click to select a line, Double click to select a paragraph, and click three times to select the entire document.

The One doc controls them all! Well, I think so at least. Havve a gnaders and see what you think, at: http://www.helpdesk.net.au/downloads/Wordcuts.pdf

select rectangular block of text.
Especially handy when you want to remove same item in a long list, say manually typed bullets, or extra unneeded spaces/tabs.

7 additional techniques and counting ... can we double it?!

Download handout of 35+ shortcuts to select text in Microsoft Word:
http://www.softwarepro.com/docs/Word-SelectingText.pdf
More tips and shortcuts at http://www.softwarepro.com

Grab 16 pages of handy tips, hints and helps ..courtesy of Helpdesk and with thanks to this forum and others for helping me to flesh it out. It's inspiring to see people help others in this way without the sniping that often goes on. Great!

Hmmmm, why stop at Micrtosoft Word, what about...

http://www.helpdesk.net.au/downloads/Wordcuts.doc

I just love how much we know together.

Before "upgrading" to Word 2010, Alt + drag worked fine for selecting a vertical line of text.
But now it is unreliable - much of the time it opens the "Research" panel on the right. This is highly irritating. I've scoured the net for ways to permanently disable it. But they don't help more than once! I want to permanently disable this irritating and unnecessary "research" feature... Suggestions welcome...