Word Tip 2: Discontiguous Selection
Nisus Writer 3.0 introduced discontiguous selection fifteen years ago. This is an unbelievably useful feature, but sadly still uncommon in most products. In recent years Microsoft Word finally caught up. However, the feature has been little advertised, and it’s easy to miss.
To make a discontiguous selection in Word 2002 and later on Windows, hold down the control key when dragging for the second and subsequent parts of the selection. On Mac Word X and later use the Command key instead.
You can now cut, copy, paste, apply styles to, spell check, word count, or otherwise operate on what you’ve selected.
December 29th, 2005 at 7:16 PM
OpenOffice.org 2.0 allows the same thing.
December 30th, 2005 at 12:28 PM
I thought it was when my two year old points to seemingly random things and shouts “Mine. Mine. Mine!”