Multiple cursors in Microsoft Word

Question

A really useful feature in TextMate is multiple cursors, as described in this video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jqc5EdZmpmQ

Are multiple cursors possible in Microsoft Word?

Solution

There is no equivalent feature in Microsoft Word, and nothing even nearly like it.

There are some facilities for selecting multiple areas/objects in Word, but they don't give you multiple insertion points or the ability to insert/replace text in multiple places, as in TextMate. Typically, what they give you is the ability to apply formatting to multiple areas at once.

I would say that only one of these selection methods is in common use, and that is the ability to select multiple shapes. But you cannot for example use that to insert or modify the text in all the shapes, just things like the colour of the fill.

A very old way to make a "non-contiguous" selection is to hold down the alt key when you are selecting text with the mouse. Then, you can select a "block" of characters outside a table. Again, you can format the selected text. But if you try to overtype it, nothing happens. If you actually inspect the value of Selection.Text in VBA, you will probably see that it just contains the selected characters in the first line of text.

This selection method can still be used to calculate the total of a set of numbers in a column outside a table. It's really a predecessor of the ability to put a formula in a table. So for example, you can select a block of numbers and use the ToolsCalculate command to display their sum in the status bar. ToolsCalculate doesn't have a key assigned to it any more, so if you want to use it, you either have to assign a key to it or for example go into Quick Access Toolbar (QAT) customisation, find the Calculate command in All Commands, and add it to the QAT.

It is also possible to make multiple selections using a trick in VBA. It doesn't seem very useful to me, but for example, the following code selects the Bookmarked areas in the body of a document. You could adapt it for other types of thing that have a text .Range:

Dim thing As Object
With ActiveDocument
  For Each thing In .Bookmarks
    thing.Range.Editors.Add wdEditorEveryone
  Next
  .SelectAllEditableRanges wdEditorEveryone
  .DeleteAllEditableRanges wdEditorEveryone
End With

In this case, if you inspect Selection.Text in VBA, you will probably see that it is the text of the last bookmark in the document. Again, you can change some of the text's formatting, but you can't usefully change the text. In this case, ToolsCalculate will probably give you the value of Selection.Text.

Comments

[harper]

A really useful feature of StackExchange site is the culture of including the necessary information in the question. This allows to read the question even if the referenced resources are not accessible anymore. Further many people are bored by advertising videos so that they are often reluctant to stream videos on their cellphone data connection. Please keep in mind, that you should make it easy to get all necessary information to make an answer easy.

[Herb Gu _ MSFT]

Based on my knowledge, there is no build-in feature to use multiple cursors in Microsoft Word. Multiple-cursors is useful features to do coding. Maybe some 3rd-party add-ins could help you do this in Word.