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Q. I’m frustrated with the way Microsoft Word selects groups of words and whole sentences when I want to select only a single word, part of a word, or a space. How can I get the software to stop doing this?
A. The Word Select feature, which is on by default, is intended to be a time-saver when editing copy. It automatically extends your selection, backwards or forwards, by highlighting the next word and the neighboring word space when your cursor crosses a “whitespace,” which by Microsoft’s definition can include punctuation. Unfortunately, that behavior can be counterproductive when you want to highlight only a part of a word, an extra word space, and so on.
There are two solutions:
1. Temporarily override this feature by moving your cursor backwards into a word, which turns off auto-select for that selection. But if you go forward again on the same text, Word reverts to Word Select. This method gives you complete control over the selection process without turning off the feature entirely.
2. Turn off this feature completely. The location where you can do so varies according to the version of Microsoft Word you’re using.
Word 2007 for Windows: Go to Options > Advanced and uncheck the box next to “When selecting, automatically select entire word.”
Word 2008 for the Mac: Go to Preferences > Authoring and Proofing Tools > Edit and uncheck the box next to “When selecting, automatically select entire word.”
Word 2004 for the Mac: Go to Preferences > Edit > Editing Options and uncheck the box next to “When selecting, automatically select entire word.”
Note: Even after turning off Word Select, you can still double-click to select an entire word, Control/Command-click to select a sentence, and triple-click to select an entire paragraph.
Figure 1. Word’s Edit Preferences window.
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This article was last modified on May 15, 2023
This article was first published on June 26, 2008
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