Different Modes for Selecting Text?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Peyton Todd
  • Start date Start date
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Peyton Todd

Every now and then, my MS Word 2003 gets itself into a mode where every time
you click anywhere in the document, it thinks you want to select everything
from the top of the document down to where you clicked. While in that same
mode, the scroll bar on the right also operates differently: instead of
moving down about one screen full, it interprets thelength of the scroll bar
as depicting the length of the whole document, and moves down an amount
proportional to how down the scroll bar you clicked. The only way I have
found to get out of this is to re-boot the computer. How can I prevent this?
How can I get out of that mode once it starts? (Probably I inadvertently
pressed some key combination... but what?)

Thanks,
 
I believe you are describing Extend Selection. It can be turned on by
pressing F8, which is probably what you have done, by mistake. Press ESC to
turn it off.
 
The key you hit was F8, which turns on Extended mode. If you look at
the status bar at the bottom of the Word window, you'll see that the
letters EXT have changed from gray to black.

To turn it off, press the Esc key, or double-click the EXT letters to
make them gray again.

Presssing F8 multiple times expands the selection to the current word,
sentence, paragraph, section, and document. Pressing F8 and a letter
or punctuation key will extend the selection to the next occurrence of
that character. This can be useful at times -- if you know it exists.

--
Regards,
Jay Freedman
Microsoft Word MVP
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