TLC Tips of the Week:                          from Helen Olberg

This week’s tip applies to most Microsoft applications.

Did you ever have a runaway mouse when you were selecting text?

Here’s the situation:

You have a large document that extends over several screens (or an internet web page with a lot of text that you’d like to capture). You know you can highlight what you want and copy it to Window’s clipboard so you can paste it somewhere else.

You click at the starting point with your mouse and start to drag down to highlight to a point that you can’t see on the screen.

Suddenly, you are chasing the mouse down and up and down the screen, back and forth, trying to stop it exactly on the end of the area you’re trying to highlight.

FRUSTRATION!

WHAT CAN YOU DO?      

1.                  STOP moving the mouse!

2.                  Click at the beginning of the area you want to highlight.

3.                  DON’T DRAG!  Don’t click within the document or window.

4.                  Using the Scrollbars for the window, scroll down until you see the end of the area you want.

5.                  Hold down the Shift key as you click the end of the area that you want.

Now you can copy the contents to Window’s clipboard …

How do you copy to the clipboard?

Five different ways to copy to the clipboard (for pasting somewhere else):

1. Use the toolbar button   
2. Use the menu Edit, Copy.
3. Right mouse click anywhere in your highlighted area, click on Copy.
4. Tap the Windows Shortcut key on the keyboard (If you have it on your keyboard, it will be immediately to the left of the Ctrl key that is below the right shift key. Laptops don’t usually have it.)
5. My favorite is to use Ctrl C (shortcut keys). Why is this my favorite? It always works!

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