106753532 printed for boss3 on 6 March 2016
Basic IT Skills • Manipulating your text
This section describes a number of techniques for moving around within a document,
viewing different parts of the text, re-positioning the cursor or insertion point, and selecting
portions of text. You must select pieces of text in order to get Word to modify them. As
often with Word, there is more than one way of doing almost everything. You must decide
which ways suit you best.
There is a document that you can download called roughwrk.doc. Use this to practise the
techniques described here. Download roughwrk.doc onto your floppy disk.
 If it’s not already running, start up Word
 Choose Open from the File menu, and in the dialog-box locate the file
roughwrk.doc on the A drive and open it
Moving the flashing cursor
The cursor is the flashing vertical line which indicates where the text you type will be
inserted in the document. It is sometimes known as the insertion point.
With the
keyboard
You can move around
within your text by
pressing these keys or
combinations of keys.
Try these actions
using the roughwrk
file.
The arrow keys
referred to here, and
the other cursormoving keys, are
situated on the
keyboard in a group
between the main
character-keys and
the numeric keypad.
To Move the cursor
Press
left one character
right one character
up one line
down one line
left one word
right one word
up one paragraph
down one paragraph
to beginning of line
to end of line
to beginning of file
to end of file
up one window
down one window
to top of current page
to top of next page
left arrow
right arrow
up arrow
down arrow
control+left arrow
control+right arrow
control+up arrow
control+down arrow
home
end
control+home
control+end
page up
page down
control+page up
control+page down
Where you are told to press control+another key, it means
press the control (or Ctrl) key and
keep it down while pressing the other key.
The control key is situated at the front of the keyboard, on the left.
Library and Information Services • Basic IT Skills • Manipulating your text
With the mouse
You can also use the mouse to work your way around the document ...
Click on the up arrow to move up the
document a line at a time.
Click within the scroll bar above
the scroll box to move up by a
screenful at a time.
To move rapidly through the document, point at the
scroll box, press the mouse button and keep it pressed
while dragging the box up or down the scroll bar.
Click within the scroll bar below the
scroll box to move down by a
screenful at a time.
Click on the down arrow to move
down the document a line at a time.
To jump to the next page click the double
down arrow; for the previous page, click
the double up arrow Ignore the little circle
between the double arrows for now.
... but scrolling with the mouse will not move the cursor (the flashing insertion point). To
ensure the cursor is in the correct position you must point to the required position with the
mouse and click with the left mouse button.
The Go to command
The Go To command enables you to go straight to a particular point in your document.
 Press the function key F5 or Control+g to get the Go To dialog-box
 Click on Page in the Go to What: box
 Click in the Enter Page Number: box and type in the number of the page you
want to go to
 Press the Return key or click the Go To button
 Click Close to dismiss the Go To dialog-box
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Searching for text
One way of leaping quickly to a
particular point in your document
is by searching for a particular
piece of text.
 Choose Find... from
the Edit menu or press Control+F to display the Find dialog box
 In the Find What: box, type in the text you want to search for
 Click Find Next
 If the first occurrence of the search-text is not the one you want, click Find Next
again until you find what you are looking for
 When you have found the text you are looking for, or when the whole document
has been searched without finding it, you can close the Find dialog box by
clicking Cancel
Selecting text
When
editing or
formatting
text in
Word you must first select the text that you want to change. You can select a single
character, a word, a sentence ... or the whole document. When you select a piece of text it is
highlighted (which usually means it appears as white on black).
Using the mouse to select text
Either drag over the text that you want to select:
o
o
o
point to where the selection is to begin
hold down the left mouse button and drag the mouse pointer to the end of the selection
to cancel a selection made with the mouse: click with the mouse anywhere in the
document, apart from the selected text
Or point and click as follows
To Select
Action with left mouse button
Word
Sentence
Double-click (ie click twice rapidly) in the word
Hold down the Control key and click anywhere within the
sentence
Within the selection bar*, point to the line and click
Within the selection bar*, point to the first line, click and hold the
button down while dragging downwards over the required lines
Within the selection bar*, point to the paragraph and doubleclick
Click where the selection is to begin. Hold down the Shift key
and click where the selection is to end
Hold down the Control key and click anywhere within the
selection bar; or click 3 times in the selection bar*
Line of text
Multiple lines of text
Paragraph
Large areas of text
Whole Document
* The selection bar is an unmarked area down the left side of the document window — when in this area the
mouse pointer will be indicated as a right-leaning white arrow
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Using the keyboard to select text
The following instructions describe one way of selecting with the keyboard. Selecting with
the keyboard is preferred by experienced, rapid typists who do not want to move their
hands away from the keyboard. They involve using the cursor movement keys described
on page 1
 Place the cursor (the flashing insertion point) at the beginning of the text to be
selected
 Hold down the Shift key while using any of the cursor movement key
combinations described on page 1. See how the highlight is extended as you go
o for example, to extend the highlight by a word at a time, hold down Shift
and Control while pressing the right arrow key
 Cancel the selection by moving the cursor on without the Shift key being held
down: this can be done by releasing the Shift key and then either clicking
anywhere with the mouse, or pressing one of the arrow keys
Deleting text
Select the text to be deleted
Press the Delete key
To delete Press
Character to left of cursor
Character to right of cursor
Word to left of cursor
Word to right of cursor
Backspace
Delete
Ctrl+Backspace
Ctrl+Delete
Replacing text
Once you have selected a piece of text, the next thing you type will replace it. Try this out in
the roughwrk document:
 Double-click on a word to select it
 Type another word to replace the selected word
 Select a paragraph
 Press the spacebar or the Return key, and you will see that the whole of the
paragraph is replaced with empty space
You might accidentally delete text in this way, so it’s worth knowing how to undo mistakes
like this. There is an undo button on the toolbar. See if you can find it. If you can’t there is a
section later in this note which tells you where it is.
Overtype mode
There is another way of replacing text: this is by going into “overtype mode”. The usual
mode for typing is “insert mode”, which means that what you type is inserted in front of the
flashing cursor and the text after the cursor moves along.
In overtype mode the text of your document gets overwritten as you type. To go into
overtype mode, press the Insert key or double-click on the OVR button in the status bar (at
the foot of the Word window). When you are in overtype mode the OVR is shown in bold.
To cancel overtype mode and return to the usual “insert” mode either press the Insert key
or double-click on OVR.
In roughwrk document try out going into overtype mode and getting out of it. On the
whole it is best to avoid overtype mode. The main reason for mentioning it is that it is easy
to get into it by mistake, by pressing the Insert key. If you find your text being eaten up as
you type, the likely
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Formatting text
There are many ways in which you can change the appearance and layout of your text.
These are described in detail in the note on formatting.
 Locate the three character formatting buttons in the toolbar
 In the roughwrk file select some text
 Click the character formatting buttons to see their effects
Moving and copying text
The next few pages cover both moving and copying. The difference is that if you move text
from one location to another it is deleted from the original location, whereas when you copy
the text it will remain in its original location and a copy will be placed in the new location.
The clipboard
The clipboard is a temporary storage area which is used when moving and copying text. An
item placed on the clipboard remains there until other text is sent to it. While text is on the
clipboard it may be pasted into a document as many times as necessary.
One use for the clipboard is for transferring data (text or graphics) from one document to
another, or from one Windows program to another. This section only deals with the use of
the clipboard within a single Word document.
The toolbar
The instructions will refer to several tool-buttons on the toolbar. Word has a number of
different sets of tools, and it could be that the toolbar displayed by Word on your screen
does not contain the buttons referred to here. Look carefully to make sure you can locate
these buttons – if you can’t see them, ask for help, or see section 11 for information on how
to display toolbars
Word’s icons are supposed to be more or less self-explanatory. Can you guess what these
particular buttons are for? If you move the mouse pointer slowly over the buttons, Word
will display a brief message saying what they do.
People sometimes think the icon with a brush is for pasting – it is not a paste-brush,
however. It is the “format painter” which you will learn about later
 To use one of the tools, point at the tool-button with the mouse and click the
left mouse-button once
Moving Text Using the Clipboard
 Select the text to be moved in one of the ways described earlier
 Either choose Cut from the Edit menu or click on
 Move the cursor to the new location for the text
 Either choose Paste from the Edit menu or click on
on the toolbar
on the toolbar
Moving Text Bypassing the Clipboard
Method 1
 Select the text to be moved
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 Point to the selection
 Press the left mouse button – a small, dotted box will appear – keep the mousebutton pressed
 Drag the mouse pointer to the new location and then release the mouse button
Method 2
 Select the text to be moved
 Point to the place where you want the text to be moved to
 Press the Control key and keep it pressed while pressing the right mousebutton
Copying Text Using the Clipboard
 Select the text to be copied
 Either choose Copy from the Edit menu or click on
 Move the cursor to the new location for the text
 Either choose Paste from the Edit menu or click on
from the toolbar
from the toolbar
Copying Text Bypassing the Clipboard
Method 1
 Select the text to be copied
 Point to the selection
 Press the left mouse button – a small, dotted box will appear – keep the mousebutton pressed
 Drag the mouse pointer to the new location – keep the mouse-button pressed
 Press the Control key – a little + sign will appear beside the mouse-pointer –
and now you can release the mouse-button
Method 2
 Select the text to be copied
 Hold down the Ctrl+Shift keys, point to the new location and click the right
mouse button
Mistakes and how to undo them
Note that if you have selected a portion of your text, or even the whole of your document,
and you then press a character key, or the tab, space-bar or Return key, all the selected text
will disappear and be replaced by whatever you have typed. This is often very convenient,
but it can be dangerous.
There is a speed key combination (Control+a) which will select the whole document – the
same effect as clicking three times in the selection bar. If you are typing very fast it is quite
easy to type Control+A by mistake when you mean to type a capital A (using the Shift key).
If this happens without your noticing, you might well delete your entire document by
accident.
If you make this, or any other, mistake Word offers a way of undoing it.
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Undoing the previous action
Either choose the Undo command from the Edit menu or click on
the toolbar
in
You can cancel or undo a series of previous actions by pressing the
button repeatedly.
If you click on the arrow-head beside the Undo button you will be offered
a list of past actions and you can choose how far back you want to go. To
cancel the last four actions, click on the fourth item on the list.
Another way of recovering from mistakes: If you have got into a mess that you can’t
untangle, close your document (using the Close command in the File menu) without saving.
Then open the document again. This will take you back to the last version that you saved.
Save frequently!
Saving your document takes
no more than a single click on the
Manipulating your text
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