I have written about Extended Highlighting before: As you may remember, in my previous article:
Up until 2007, at the bottom of your screen, you had 3 areas that are no longer displayed. They are the OVR (Overstrike), REC (Record Macro) and EXT (Extended Highlighting). When 1 or all of those three items were selected, they would light up so to speak and display as black, opposed to light grey when not in use.
The one I want to focus on is "EXT" Extended Highlighting. It is a very useful highlighting tool that could fall by the wayside simply because it is no longer displayed (without knowing how to turn it on) so it could be an out of sight out of mind type thing nowadays.
To use Extended Highlighting, one way to activate it is by pressing the F8 key. Once activated, ANY key you press, will cause the system to highlight up to the "first instance of the key or key combination you selected". That is the key...the "first instance".
So here are some ways you can use it.
1. F8 and the period key. Will highlight from wherever your cursor is to the first period it encounters. Press period again and it will highlight up to the next period it encounters or the end of the sentence.
2. When F8 has been pressed, press the Return Key. This will highlight from "wherever" your cursor is to the end of the paragraph. So, I may for instance, press F8, press Return 5x to highlight the next 5 paragraphs quickly and then apply a style by use of clicking on the style name from the right side panel or using Control Shift V (the equivalent of double click on the mouse) .
3. Activating F8 (Extended Highlighting) and pressing Control End will highlight from cursor position to the end of the document so you can copy, cut, apply a style, delete etc. This method is often used to highlight the entire text of a document "without" including the "document shell" which pressing Control A "would do" so you can move the text out of a document that may have had a corruption issue in the behind the scenes Visual Basic of that particular file.
4. To turn off Extended Highlighting, you can press Esc and click in a neutral area which will complete the turn off process.
Selection Mode:
The one I want to focus on is "EXT" Extended Highlighting. It is a very useful highlighting tool that could fall by the wayside simply because it is no longer displayed (without knowing how to turn it on) so it could be an out of sight out of mind type thing nowadays.
To use Extended Highlighting, one way to activate it is by pressing the F8 key. Once activated, ANY key you press, will cause the system to highlight up to the "first instance of the key or key combination you selected". That is the key...the "first instance".
So here are some ways you can use it.
1. F8 and the period key. Will highlight from wherever your cursor is to the first period it encounters. Press period again and it will highlight up to the next period it encounters or the end of the sentence.
2. When F8 has been pressed, press the Return Key. This will highlight from "wherever" your cursor is to the end of the paragraph. So, I may for instance, press F8, press Return 5x to highlight the next 5 paragraphs quickly and then apply a style by use of clicking on the style name from the right side panel or using Control Shift V (the equivalent of double click on the mouse) .
3. Activating F8 (Extended Highlighting) and pressing Control End will highlight from cursor position to the end of the document so you can copy, cut, apply a style, delete etc. This method is often used to highlight the entire text of a document "without" including the "document shell" which pressing Control A "would do" so you can move the text out of a document that may have had a corruption issue in the behind the scenes Visual Basic of that particular file.
4. To turn off Extended Highlighting, you can press Esc and click in a neutral area which will complete the turn off process.
Selection Mode:
Now, let us talk about Selection Mode that sits in your "Status Bar" at the bottom of your screen on 2007-13.
When the "Selection Mode" item is checked in the status bar menu, the words "Extend Selection" will appear in the status bar "After" you press your F8" key.
When the "Selection Mode" item is checked in the status bar menu, the words "Extend Selection" will appear in the status bar "After" you press your F8" key.
If "Selection Mode" isn't checked on the Status Bar Menu, then there isn't any visible indication of the Selection Mode (Extended Highlighting) being active in the Status Bar.
As in previous versions, you can turn on extended selection mode by pressing F8. Pressing ESC or clicking the words "Extend Selection" in the status bar turns the "Extended Selection Mode" off.
As in previous versions, you can turn on extended selection mode by pressing F8. Pressing ESC or clicking the words "Extend Selection" in the status bar turns the "Extended Selection Mode" off.
So, the routine is:
1. Place a check next to Selection Mode in the status bar Menu
2. Press F8
3. Use the Extend Highlight feature to highlight what you want.
4. Click off "Extend Selection" or use Escape when done with the feature.
My favorite use of Extended Highlighting is highlighting a paragraph at a time by pressing the Enter key 1x for each paragraph I wish to highlight and I like to also use it by starting at the top of a document, using Control End to quickly highlight the entire document thus leaving the document shell behind by copying or pasting it to a new blank document.
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