How to Copy or Select Text Vertically in Microsoft Word ?

By default, when you drag your mouse to highlight select the texts in Microsoft Word document, it is usually in horizontal selection. Users are more familiar to horizontally selecting texts in lines, tables, or paragraphs, etc.

But, when it appears to a vertical selection, most of them have no hints about it. They need to select the texts they want to copy lines by lines horizontally as they want the vertical parts only.

If you often need to use Microsoft Word for writing documents, you’ve probably come across the situation where you needed to delete the beginning of each line in a list, especially if you are reformatting a document or dealing with text pasted from another source.

So, Do you know that Microsoft Word allows users to select text vertically as well?

Then, how to solve this problem wisely? The best method is to hold the “Alt” key on your keyboard and then use your mouse to drag over the text downwards to highlight select text in your word file, then press “Ctrl + C” to copy. Lastly, paste the copied text to the document you want. Or, If you want to delete that slected part just delete after selecting the texts.

For example, I want to delete the first word from each item in the above list, so I hold down the Alt key and make a selection around the area:

Now I can cut, copy, or just delete the selection.

You can make a vertical selection anywhere in the document (See Above Picture), not just with lists. It’s probably more useful when dealing with a similar scenario.