Selecting text in Word.

Ted_Hutchinson

I'm trying to find a quick way of selecting only half a page of text in a word document that was in 2 columns.

I have copied the text from a protected PDF file and dropped it into a word doc but now I only want the text from the left hand column and not from the right.

I'm sure there is a way of selecting only the left hand part of the page. I've thought about printing the 20 or so pages of the document and then scanning/ocr ing just the sections I need but before I waste my time doing that does anyone know if there is a quicker/easier way by perhaps using text boxes/frames?

isofa

If you hold down the ALT key when selecting, you can select unusually shaped areas, but it's not sensitive on words on sentences, so you need to be careful what you select!

Hungerdunger

I'm not quite sure about this, but couldn't you select each column of text you don't want by dragging the mouse over it and delete it, and then print what you're left with. I don't use Word, but I believe you can reformat the pages from 2 columns to one column if that helps.

C_Ronaldo

What you could do is do a save as and save the file as slightly different and experiment with whats been said

[Deleted User]

Hi,

well my idea was,

select the text on the side that you wanted, cntr+c, then cntrl+v, in a new word doc. is that daft?

bookduck

isofa wrote: »

If you hold down the ALT key when selecting, you can select unusually shaped areas, but it's not sensitive on words on sentences, so you need to be careful what you select!

"unusually shaped areas" - known as rectangles and squares

It may help if you change the font to courier. If the wrap-round is a problem, set the page to landscape or bespoke paper size and also shrink the font.

if the 2 halves are separated by tab(s), the you can convert txt to table and use the tab as a delimiter.

Personally, I think Isofa has about the easiest solution that would work 99% of the time.