Basic Text Formatting: Learn It 1

  • Reorganize text within a paragraph.
  • Make text italic, bold, or underlined.
  • Change the size, font, and color of text.

Selecting and Moving Text

To select text, click and drag your cursor across the text.

A small portion of text. A magenta arrow is pointing at the text indicating where to select it to make it highlighted. A small portion of text. It has been dragged over by the cursor showing that it has been highlighted.

The text that is highlighted in blue is selected text. Selected text can be copied, cut, or pasted. Many features and settings in Microsoft Office are applied only to text that is selected.

Moving Text

Like files and folders, there are many ways to move text once it is selected:

  • Drag the highlighted text by clicking, holding, and moving your cursor. When you let go, the text will drop into the new location.
  • Cut using Ctrl+X (Cmnd+X), move your cursor to the new location of text, then paste to the new location with Ctrl+V (Cmnd+V). This will remove the text from the original location.
  • Copy using Ctrl+C (Cmnd+C), move your cursor to the new location of text, then paste to the new location with Ctrl+V (Cmnd+V). This will keep the text in the original location.
  • Right-click selected text, select either Copy or Cut, then right-click the new location of text and select Paste

You can move text between pages, between paragraphs, or even between programs or windows. For example, you can cut text you typed in a Word document and paste it into an email, or you can copy text from the internet and paste it into your Word document.