Selecting and moving text

A large part of text editing involves selecting, coping and moving text inside a document and undoing our action in case of mistakes. The proper knowledge of these techniques can save us a lot of time while editing documents. Furthermore these techniques are universal and can be applied to many applications.

Selection Techniques

While editing a document we frequently need to select parts of our text in order to apply formatting or just copy or move them. The following table lists the selection techniques, their action and an example image. When selecting text Writer highlights the text with a background color.

Technique	Action	Image
single word	Double click
sentence	Triple click
paragraph	Click four times in a row
multiple selections	Hold down CTRL button while clickng
continuous selection	Click at the beginning and then hold SHIFT and click to the end
All text	CTRL + A

Cut Copy and Paste

To cut, copy and paste you can use the corresponding buttons from the Standard Toolbar.

However you are advised to learn using the keyboard shortcuts for cut, copy and paste, because these commands are very often used in word processing. These keyboard shortcuts are universal to almost all applications and platforms.

Keyboard shortcuts

• Cut: CTRL + X
• Copy: CTRL + C
• Paste: CTRL + V
• Paste Unformatted: CTRL + SHIFT + V

Copy and paste from other sources

When coping text from other sources (for example other documents, websites) Writer tries to copy the formatting of the source as well. This creates many problems (known as formatting hell) and is a very common and sad mistake even to experienced users.

In contrast with normal pasting unformatted pasting does not keep the formating of the source. Therefore you should normally use unformatted pasting when copying from other sources outside your original document.

To paste Unformatted:

• Use the CTRL + SHIFT + V key combination or
• Right click and select the Paste Special menu command

Moving and copying

To copy or move text inside your document:

• Use mouse drag and drop technique
• Use cut, copy and paste commands

Drag and drop

Select the text to be moved or copied and drag with your mouse to the new position indicated by the cursor. This action by default moves text, to copy hold down the CTRL key while dragging

Cut, copy and paste

• To move a selection: Cut, click on the new location and Paste.
• To copy a selection: Copy, click on the new location and then Paste.

Undo and Redo

While we edit a document every change we make is being registered automatically. This is useful because it allows us to undo an action and go back to the previous state. For example if you accidentally delete a paragraph we can simply undo your action. Now if you decide that you want to delete it after all you can redo you last action.

So basically undo and redo allows us to go back and forth in our document editing history.