There are multiple ways to select text. To give you a comprehensive view, click on Help. When the Help menu opens, key "select text and graphics," then click the Start Search arrow. In the Results box, click Select Text and Graphics. You will notice at least two options here: Select text and graphics using the mouse and Select text by using the keyboard. Expand the selection by clicking the Show or arrow key. To use the mouse you can drag over the text, double-click a word, hold the Control key and click anywhere in the sentence. You'll see a complete list of options. Expand the section on using the keyboard and again you will see quite an extensive list of options. I'll close the Help window and we'll look at two or three of those options. Using the left mouse, I'll click a word and the word is selected. I'll click in a sentence after touching the Control key, and you will notice it selects a sentence. Triple-click in a paragraph to select the entire paragraph. Move the cursor to the left of the material. Clicking one time selects a line; clicking two times selects a paragraph; three times in the margin selects the entire document. Another option is to simply click where you want to begin the selection, hold the mouse, and then drag down to the point where you want to end the selection. And, if you are not comfortable with using the mouse, you can always click at a beginning point, hold the Shift key, and move the arrow key to select the amount of text you want to select. Once text is selected, you will have options to cut, copy, and paste, and that will be addressed in another video clip.
To cut text, first select the text, then either click the cut button on the standard toolbar or click Edit then Cut from the menu bar. Notice that Control plus X is also a keyboard shortcut that can be used to cut the text. Once the text is cut, it is removed from the document and placed on the Clipboard so it can be pasted to another location.
To copy text, select the text, click the Copy button on the standard toolbar or select Edit on the menu bar and click Copy. The text remains in the document, but a copy is placed on the clipboard where a second copy can be pasted to another location.
When selected text is cut or copied, it is placed in a temporary clipboard where it can be pasted to another location. When selected text is deleted using the Delete key, it is also placed on the clipboard. In Microsoft applications, including Word, it is possible to place up to 12 items on the clipboard, as opposed to Windows which allows only one item on the clipboard. To illustrate, we will cut some sentences from Paragraph 1 and have them transferred to the clipboard. Sentence one is selected, Cut; sentence two is selected, Cut. On the second cut, the clipboard window opens, and you will notice that the first sentence that was cut is at the bottom of the list, the second is above. I'll select the third sentence, Cut; select the fourth sentence and Cut. To replace those cuts one at a time, we'll begin at the bottom of the list replacing the first sentence, click on the previous sentence, which is the second sentence, the third sentence, and the fourth sentence. We have rebuilt our paragraph from the clipboard.
To paste text, first select the text and either cut or copy. I will select paragraph 2. In this document, I want to cut it so I will click the Cut button. To paste it after the last paragraph, click below the last paragraph, and click on the Paste button or click on Edit, Paste, and again notice that Control plus V is a keyboard shortcut. The material is cut from the location and then pasted.