How to Type, Select, and Edit Text in Word

Most of the time you spend in Word is not typing new words. It is fixing the ones already there: moving a sentence, removing a duplicate, correcting the same typo in five places. The faster you can select and move text, the faster every document gets done.

In this tutorial you will clean up a messy sign-up notice for the Tutoring Club. You will learn the selection tricks that save the most time, paste text without bringing odd formatting along, and use Find and Replace to fix a misspelled word everywhere at once.

Move the insertion point

The blinking vertical line in your document is the insertion point. Whatever you type, paste or delete happens there. The mouse pointer is different: it is the I-shaped cursor that moves with your mouse. Moving the mouse doesn't move the insertion point until you click.

Clicking works, but the keyboard is often faster, because your hands are already there. These keys move the insertion point without changing anything:

Backspace vs. Delete. Backspace erases the character to the left of the insertion point. Delete erases the character to the right. Add Ctrl to work a whole word at a time: Ctrl+Backspace removes the word before the insertion point, Ctrl+Delete the word after it.

Select text with the mouse

Before Word can cut, copy, delete or format something, you have to select it. Selected text gets a shaded background. Dragging across text works, but it often grabs one letter too many. These clicks select exactly the right amount:

Shift+click is the hero for long selections. To select three paragraphs, click just before the first word, scroll down, then Shift+click after the last word. No dragging past the bottom of the screen and watching the page race away.

Select text with the keyboard

Every movement key from the first section becomes a selection key when you add Shift. The insertion point moves the same way, and everything it passes over is selected.

The keyboard is the more precise tool. Click just before a phrase, then tap Ctrl+Shift+Right Arrow until exactly the words you want are selected. If you go one word too far, tap Ctrl+Shift+Left Arrow once to shrink it again.

To cancel a selection, press any arrow key without Shift or click anywhere in the text. Nothing is changed.

Cut, copy and paste

Cut removes the selection and keeps it on the clipboard. Copy leaves it in place and puts a copy on the clipboard. Paste puts whatever is on the clipboard at the insertion point. The shortcuts are worth learning on day one: Ctrl+X cut, Ctrl+C copy, Ctrl+V paste. The same commands are on Home› then Clipboard and in the right-click menu.

Choose how pasted text looks. Text copied from a website, an email or another document brings its own font, size and color with it. Right after you paste, a small Paste Options button appears next to the text (you can also press Ctrl to open it). It offers these choices:

To skip the menu and paste plain text straight away, press Ctrl+Shift+V. In current Word for Microsoft 365 that pastes as Keep Text Only.

Drag to move. For short moves on the same screen, select the text, point at the selection, and drag it to its new place. Watch the small gray insertion point that follows the pointer: that is where the text will land. Hold Ctrl while you drag to copy instead of move.

Undo and redo

Press Ctrl+Z to undo your last action. Press it again to undo the one before, and so on. Word remembers many steps, so deleting a paragraph by accident ten minutes ago is not a disaster. Redo (Ctrl+Y) brings back what you just undid.

The Undo and Redo buttons sit at the far left of the Home tab in current Word (older versions keep them on the Quick Access Toolbar). Click the small arrow beside Undo to see a list of recent actions. Click an item lower in the list to undo everything back to that point in one go.

When there is nothing left to redo, Ctrl+Y (or F4) repeats your last action instead. Make one word bold, select another word and press F4: it turns bold too.

Find and replace text

Find jumps to any word without scrolling. Press Ctrl+F (or click Home› then Editing› then Find) and the Navigation pane opens on the left. Type a word in its search box: every match is highlighted in the document, and the Results list shows each one in context. Click a result to jump to it, or use the up and down arrows under the search box to step through them.

Replace fixes the same thing everywhere. Press Ctrl+H (or click Home› then Editing› then Replace) to open the Find and Replace box on its Replace tab.

1. In Find what, type the wrong text, such as tutering.
2. In Replace with, type the right text: tutoring.
3. Click Find Next to see the first match, then Replace to fix it and move to the next one. Or click Replace All to fix every match at once. Word tells you how many it changed.

Click More >> in the Find and Replace box for extra options. The two you'll use most are Match case (only finds text with the same capital letters) and Find whole words only (so searching for art doesn't also match start and party).

Common mistakes

Practice