Quickly Select Large Amounts of Data with the Control Key

The Control key on your keyboard allows you to quickly select large amounts of data in Microsoft Word or Excel.  Here's how:

To select the entire file:

• In Word, open the document, press and hold the Ctrl key, and tap the letter A.  Release both keys (Ctrl+A). The entire document should be selected. 
• In Excel, if all your data is consecutive, click anywhere inside the data BEFORE pressing Ctrl+A.  This selects only the data and not the remaining blank cells.  If you click in a blank cell outside your data and then press Ctrl+A, the entire worksheet is selected.

To select part of the file to the end:

• Open the file, click your mouse where you want to begin the selection, press and hold the Ctrl and Shift keys together, and tap the End key.  Release all 3 keys (Ctrl+Shift+End).

The method above works in both Word and Excel, but if you don't want to select all columns in Excel try this:

• Select the beginning row of data over to the last column you want to include.  If you only want to include 1 column, select the beginning cell.  Press Ctrl+Shift+↓ 

EXAMPLES:
Your Excel spreadsheet has data in columns A - F and rows 1 - 2000.

• To select all the data from A1:F2000, click in cell A1 and press Ctrl+A.
• To select the data in cells A2:F2000, click in cell A2 and press Ctrl+Shift+End
• To select only the data in column A, click in cell A1 and press Ctrl+Shift+↓