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Select all in a text field with one mouse click System
I first noticed this in Safari, but it seems to be native to OS X. If you click on the top border of any text field - whether it's a form on the Web or in a System Preference pane - the text for that entire field will hilight automatically. You have to have good aim - there's only one active row of pixels: the first row where your cursor changes from an I-beam to the arrow. A simple trick, but one that may save you a click and drag.

[robg adds: I tested this with a few programs, and in general, it works ... but I can't figure out a rule for which apps support it and which apps do not. It works in Mail (except in the "To" field, for some reason), Safari, OmniWeb, TextEdit, Word and BBEdit Lite, but not in the Finder, iCab, Excel, Mozilla or IE. Can anyone provide more information on this behavior?]
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Select all in a text field with one mouse click | 8 comments | Create New Account
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But wait! There is more! (Field text selection tricks)
Authored by: twehr on Mar 13, '03 10:20:38AM

Selecting left left-most pixel in a field (Safari, at least) places cursor at the left of all text. Selecting the right-most pixelin a field places the cursor at the end of all text. Select the bottom-most pixel in the field de-selects the field altogether.



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Select all in a text field with one mouse click
Authored by: timrand on Mar 13, '03 10:31:20AM

Re: Robg's comment that it doesn't select this way in Finder...

I believe that Finder is still a (mostly) Carbon app. Perhaps this is a feature of Cocoa apps only.



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Select all in a text field with one mouse click
Authored by: robg on Mar 13, '03 11:30:21AM

But it works in BBEdit (non-Cocoa) and Word (non-Cocoa).

Whatever; it's a nice time-saver...

-rob.



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There are more cocoa apps than safari
Authored by: englabenny on Mar 13, '03 11:27:06AM

Strange that many of cocoa's features are now discovered one by one in safari -- and that's not really like the first cocoa app to be released...



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Select all in a text field with one mouse click
Authored by: network23 on Mar 13, '03 12:13:25PM

Apparently this is a 10.2.4 feature.

I tried this hint in both Mail and TextEdit. Nothing worked for me. I'm running 10.2.3.

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Don't forget triple-click!
Authored by: cewatts on Mar 13, '03 02:17:06PM

You can also triple-click in a text field to select a whole line.
This works pretty-much system-wide. I'm much quicker at triple-clicking than lining up and clicking a single-pixel space.

One of my favorite tricks is to click in a text field and then "tab, shift-tab" to go out of the text field and come back in. When the field is re-entered, it is usually all selected, including "weird" things like line breaks, etc.



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Select all in a text field with one mouse click
Authored by: aranor on Mar 13, '03 03:14:59PM

Hrm. In the URL bar it's about 3 pixels high (actually, it seems to be anywhere that the highlight covers), but in this textfield I'm writing in right now it's 1 pixel high. Welrd.



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It's the mousey version of TAB
Authored by: thinkyhead on Mar 14, '03 03:30:54AM

Clicking the top of a text field amounts to the same thing as tobbing to the text field. If tabbing to a field causes the text to be selected then clicking the top of the field will select all the text.

This tip is cool but it's usually just as fast to triple-click in the body of the text field or click-and-drag-down at the start of the text field.

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