Before you can edit or format a block of text in Microsoft Word 2007, you need to select it. Selecting the text is a way of telling Word that you want to work with a certain piece of text. (Selecting is also referred to as Highlighting.)

The simplest way of selecting text is to position the cursor where you want the selection to start, click and hold the mouse button down and drag to the position where you want to end the selection. When doing so, you don't have to drag across every single line that you want to highlight. It's sufficient for you to move the cursor in a straight line from the start to the finish. To deselect your text and get rid of the selection, click anywhere in your text. The blinking text cursor will then reappear.

Highlighting entire lines

Another way of highlighting text is to click multiple times. To highlight a word, double-click on the word. To highlight an entire paragraph, click three times on the paragraph. To highlight the entire document, click three times in the left margin.

Highlighting complete lines of text

As well as highlighting characters by dragging across them, Word also allows you to select lines of text. To do this, position the cursor in the left margin and you'll notice that the cursor changes to an arrow pointing to the right. Once the cursor has changed, you can simply click to select a single line or click, hold down the mouse button and drag to select several lines.

Using the Select All command

Another way of highlighting text is to click multiple times. To highlight a word, double-click on the word. To highlight an entire paragraph, click three times on the paragraph. To highlight the entire document, click three times in the left margin.