4 Ways to Unselect the Trailing Space after Selecting a Word via Double Click in Word

In this post, we are happy to share with you 4 ways to unselect the trailing space while selecting a word by double click in Word.

The quickest and easiest way to have a word in selection is to double click on it. However, Word by default selects the trailing space after the target word for you as well. This feature can be annoying if you need to copy the word as a part of password.

Therefore, we find 4 methods to tackle this problem.

Method 1: Press “Shift+ Left arrow”

  1. First of all, double click to select a word and the trailing space is also in selection too.
  2. Then press “Shift+ Left arrow” to deselect the trailing space, such as below:    Press "Shift+ Left Arrow"

Method 2: Add a Punctuation Mark

We find that Word stops picking up the space after a word unless it’s followed with a punctuation mark. Thus, another way to get rid of the space while selecting a word is adding a punctuation mark after it.

Here is what it looks like:Effect of Adding Punctuation Mark

Method 3: Press “Ctrl+ Shift+ Left arrow”

Besides method 1, there is another keyboard shortcut to select only a word.

  1. To begin with, position your cursor at the end of the target word, right after the last letter of the word.Put Cursor after a Word
  2. Next, press “Ctrl+ Shift+ Left arrow”. Then only the word is selected.

Method 4: Run a Macro

Like always, macro is such a magical thing which can save us plenty of time. This time, we will give you a macro to select the word before or after your insertion pointer and remove the trailing space at the same time.

  1. First and foremost, put your cursor properly. For example, in order to select the word before your insertion pointer, you should position it right next to the last letter of the word. While to select a word after insertion pointer, you need to place it right next to the first letter of the word.
  2. Secondly, click “Developer” tab and then the “Visual Basic” command to trigger Word VBA editor. Or just take the keyboard shortcut combination of “Alt+ F11”.Click "Developer"->Click "Visual Basic"
  3. Thirdly, click “Normal” then “Insert”.
  4. Click on “Module”.Click "Normal"->Click "Insert"->Click "Module"
  5. Then double click on the new module to open the coding area.
  6. Paste the following codes there:
'The macro is used to select a word without double click and eliminate the trailing space meanwhile.
Sub SelectWordAndRemoveTrailingSpace()
  Dim objWordSelected As Range
  Selection.Words(1).Select
  'Initialization
  Set objWordSelected = Selection.Range
  If objWordSelected.Characters.Last = Chr(32) Then
    objWordSelected.End = objWordSelected.End - 1
  End If
  objWordSelected.Copy
End Sub
  1. Click “Run”.Paste Codes->Click "Run"

Safeguard Your Data Integrity

With frequent use of Word, it’s hard to imagine it never collapse. As a matter of fact, it stops working from time to time. All these unusual shut downs show us how important to keep a backup of Word file. Sadly, few people can execute their backup plan on time. Therefore, it seems to get a corrupt Word file recovery tool may be of a great help.

Author Introduction:

Vera Chen is a data recovery expert in DataNumen, Inc., which is the world leader in data recovery technologies, including Excel file corruption fix tool and pdf repair software products. For more information visit www.datanumen.com

4 responses to “4 Ways to Unselect the Trailing Space after Selecting a Word via Double Click in Word”

  1. How about windows just fix this crap. I want my computer to do the bare minimum, which is to highlight a single word. There is no reason that I should have to work to highlight less. This article is fine, but for every word explaining how to fix microsofts garbage, there should be 30 words denounces windows for making a super simple function annoyingly frustrating

  2. The simple way to prevent Word from selecting trailing spaces is to untick the option
    ‘Use Smart Paragraph Selection’

    Depending which version of Word you are using you will either find it under
    File – Options – More – Advanced
    or in older versions of Word you’ll find it under
    Tools – options – Edit

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