Selecting and Moving Text

Learning Objectives

  • Reorganize text within a paragraph.

To select text, click and drag your cursor across the text.

A small portion of text. A green arrow is pointing at the text indicating where to select it to make it highlighted. A small portion of text. It has been dragged over by the cursor showing that it has been highlighted.

The text that is highlighted in gray is selected text. Selected text can be copied, cut, or pasted. Many features and settings in Microsoft Office are applied only to text that is selected.

Moving Text

Like files and folders, there are many ways to move text once it is selected:

  • Cut using Ctrl+X, move your cursor to the new location of text, then paste to the new location with Ctrl+V
  • Copy using Ctrl+C, move your cursor to the new location of text, then paste to the new location with Ctrl+V
  • Right-click selected text, select either Copy or Cut, then right-click the new location of text and select Paste

You can move text between pages, between paragraphs, or even between programs or windows. For example, you can cut text you typed in a Word document and paste it into an email, or you can copy text from the internet and paste it into a PowerPoint presentation.

In many programs, you can also drag text to a new location within the same program. For example, in Microsoft Word, you can select text, then click and drag it to a new location within the Word document.

Practice Question

 

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