How to Select Non-Linear Text in a Word Document

This is perhaps one of the most impressive tricks I’ve seen recently with using Microsoft Word.

Have you ever had the occasion when you needed to select a chunk of text out of a document, but it wasn’t necessarily in a straight line or list that you needed to grab?

If you’ll look at the image above as my example, let’s say I had the list of items on the left, but wanted to get rid of all the text on the right (highlighted in the blue block). The lines of text on the right are part of the lines of text that I want to keep.

I can’t just select the chunk on the right and leave the list of text on the right unselected in the document. Or can I?

Did you know if you hold the "ALT" key down while dragging your mouse in a Word document you can select the text that you specifically grab with your mouse and cursor. It doesn’t automatically jump from line to line as you extend your selection.

In the example below I held down "ALT" and then dragged my cursor from the bottom-left corner of the blue box up to the top-right corner of the box to select the text as it’s highlighted.

I then just hit the "DELETE" key and ta-da! I’ve got my list of text on the right that’s ready to be edited, all left alone in their lines of data.

There are a number of times where this has come in handy for me, now that you know it’s possible. Let me know where you’ve used it and how it’s helped you.

Image: Snagit of Word application in Office 2007 suite