Selected text question

Scrivener Scrivener for macOS
1

It occasionally happens that one selects a bit of text, goes out of that document, and on going back in wishes for it to remain selected so that one may perform some action on it.

This has just happened to me. I was reading Yeats’s short poem Remorse for Intemperate Speech, and reached for the cup of tea balanced on my chest, and somehow my reaching hand swept across and back, and placed the entire text of an early 20th-century novel in the middle of the poem.

Now I have a problem. This unwanted text is in there, selected in grey. But if I go back in and click within the text, it will be un-selected again, and I’ll have to re-select all 58,000 words or so.

Is there any way to keep that text selected when I click back in, so I can delete or cut it?

2

Not by clicking, because that action will move the insertion point to wherever you click, but you can use Ctrl+Tab to cycle through the different elements of the window and focus the editor that way, or focus the editor directly via the commands in the View > Move Focus To submenu. Once the editor is in focus, your text selection will be active and show with your usual selection colour, ready to delete, cut, etc.

3

Ah, thanks, mon mouton, that worked. Scary little while when the spinning wheel appeared, but it worked!