Quickly Moving Text with the Mouse

With drag-and-drop, you can move text without overwriting content that you want to retain in your clipboard.

@david Cohen: using right-dragging (draging using the right mousebutton) prevents this problem, since you always have to confirm wat you want to do
(and it also gives you more possibilities)

There is also the Windows capacity: When dragging the tekst you can also hold the shift key - to move or the ctrl key - to copy the selected text

One of the problems with moving text is that it's all too easy to drop it into the wrong place. and then you have to mess with it further.

sometimes it's better to copy the text to be moved, leave the original text in place, paste the copied text into the target zone. If it's landed well, then go back and delete the original.

Drag-and-drop was a profound innovation. I can clearly remember the first time I used it. It was 1993, and the feature had just been added to WordPerfect in version 6.0a.

The first method stopped working on My Word 2007 and the second doesn't work either.

I was sure I knew what both methods would be but came here just in case....
Bingo! I am delighted to learn about method 2.
Thanks!

@Gloria P:

If you select the text and then use [Alt]+[Shift]+ an up/down arrow key, then the text is moved without altering formatting.

For short moves, I would recommend that over changing your default paste settings (which are there to prevent document corruption when pasting from non-Word sources).

For moving the text a long way, just paste and then click your paste options tag and choose Keep Source Formatting or Match Destination Formatting/Use Destination Styles (whichever you want).

Remember that if you match destination formatting to a style defined differently than what you are pasting (e.g. you are pasting bold text and matching a non-bold style), then the direct formatting is removed IF it is applied to over 50% of the text you are pasting.

Hope that helps!

Gloria - maybe there's a default paste setting, like in Word 2007. Go to Word Options > Advanced > Cut, Copy and Paste. In 2007, there's a selection to be made for
a) pasting within the same document
b) pasting between documents
c) pasting between documents when styles conflict
d) pasting from other programs

For each of these you can choose between
1) Keep source formatting
2) Match destination formatting
3) Keep text only

My guess is that option 3 Keep text only is set for you. Change the setting to option 1 and click OK on the Word Options dialog.

Apologies if 2013 setting are different from 2103. Maybe a 2013 user can help here?

For years, I have continued to use key strokes to mark and move text, because it's faster and more accurate to mark beginning and end-points w/o moving my hands from the keyboard. When I started using WORD 2013, I've discovered that when I re-insert the text where I want it, it loses any original modifications such as italics or underlinings--a big waste of time. Is there any solution to that?

In Mac Office 2011 and I think it's also true in Windoze versions I haven't seen the dotted lines in the first section step 2.

On the Mac the selected text is just the selection color and once selected release the left-click mouse button and then while hovering over any part of the selection just left-click and drag the text where you want it, then release the left button.

On the Mac I couldn't get the second method to work at all. No combination of control, command or option seemed to help. Mostly they just brought up the secondary/shortcut menu.