Move the Cursor and Select a Portion of an Expression

How To... > Work with Formulas > Work with the Formula Editor > Move the Cursor and Select a Portion of an Expression

Moving and positioning the cursor in the formula editor can be tricky. Here are some tips for getting what you want to happen:

•In general, you can click the mouse where you want to position the cursor; but when that fails, try the right and left arrow keys either on the formula editor keypad or on your keyboard.

•If you are inside a parenthetical expression, typing a right parenthesis will move the cursor to the right and outside of that expression.

•If you are inside a quoted expression (a string), typing a double quote will move the cursor to the right and outside the quoted expression.

•Pressing Tab will select the next selectable chunk of the entire expression. This is particularly helpful when you have if- or switch statements and you want to get to the next section.

•The up arrow keys on the keypad and the keyboard will select the next largest chunk of the expression, starting from the current selection. (Example: Pressing the up arrow enough times will select the entire expression.)

•The down arrow keys on the keypad and the computer keyboard will select the next smallest chunk of the expression. (But this is less useful than the up arrow, because it is hard to predict which smaller expression will be selected.)