Navigate Word Faster 3 - Moving Your Cursor and Selecting Parts of Your Document

Last updated on Apr 7, 2024

A key way to get around your document faster is to ditch your mouse when navigating text. That's right getting your cursor from one line to next, selecting words or lines and skipping through pages, or the start or end of your document. It will feel like a superpower!

From Start, to End, and Everything In-Between

Go to the end: Ctrl + Shift + End to select from the current position to the end of the document.
Go to the beginning: But wait, I got that wrong. I need to go back to the beginning! No problem. CTRL + Shift + Home will get you there!
Page-by-page: You have probably been ignoring those buttons on your keyboard that say Page Up and Page Down. Press them and see how handy they are! I know I was scratching my head as to why I wasn't navigating documents this way sooner, it just feels natural to go page-by-page per key press. Also by using CTRL + Page Up or Page Down you skip to top of the next or previous page which might be a more intuitive way to go page-by-page through a document.
Paragraph-by-paragraph: CTRL + up arrow
Line by Line: up or down arrow - but that's another one you know already isn't it?
Skip to the end of the current line: Press the End key
Skip to the start of the current line: Press the Home key
Word by Word: Ctrl+Right arrow will your cursor one word to the right. Likewise Ctrl +Left Arrow will move your cursor one word to the left.
Character by character: Just use the arrow keys, left or right to go character by character - but you did that intuitively anyway didn't you?

I'm moving around! If only I could select stuff too....

Your superpower for this is the F8 key. Pressing F8 puts you into "Selection Mode" this extend your selection from where your cursor currently is to where you navigate using all the previous keys.

Selection mode is a "sticky" mode. You will be in this mode until you turn it off with the Esc key. When you turn it off, any selection will still be current. To remove the selection you will need to press the back arrow. Then the selection will collapse back to the start of the selection.

Word by Word: Pressing the F8 key twice will select the word where your cursor is.

Sentence by Sentence: pressing the F8 key three times will select the sentence where the cursor is.

Line-by-line: This is often a little redundant, but press F8 four times and you will select the line.

Whole document: This also a little redundant, but press five times and you will select your whole document. I find it more intuitive to use CTRL + A (as in "A" for all) instead.

An alternative to using F8 and selection mode: You can just use the Shift key with your navigation combination. It is easy to remember because once you know the navigation keys (which all use CTRL as a modifier) you just add an extra Shift to the same key combo. I often find this is useful because when I am in the flow navigating through text, I come across some to select and I just add the extra Shift key to my normal navigation routine. So for example selecting a line would SHIFT + End.

Conclusion

Thanks for reading to the end!

To summarise, think of a base set of keys as your navigation default. All the arrow keys, page up, page down, home and end.

Using modifier keys expands the range CTRL + home extends this short cut from the start of line to the start of a document for example.

You're flying through document with just the keyboard! Now you add Shift to your keyboard combos or use the F8 key to enter selection mode. Because you already read our other article anything you want to do with the selection through a menu you whizz through on the keyboard. Enjoy your new superpower!