Using Alt-select in SSMS, Word, and elsewhere

re: Using Alt-select in SSMS, Word, and elsewhere

Chris Nelson — Sun, 09 Sep 2012 12:11:49 GMT

It may not work in Notepad, but it works in Notepad++ and many other programming editors. I believe it also works in Adobe Acrobat, which makes it useful for monthly budgeting.

re: Using Alt-select in SSMS, Word, and elsewhere

dbaInTraining — Mon, 17 Sep 2012 19:14:29 GMT

Thanks for the tip. This will prove helpful.

re: Using Alt-select in SSMS, Word, and elsewhere

Jared Ko — Tue, 18 Sep 2012 23:52:44 GMT

Also useful for execution of commented-out code. Usually you'll have some sort of indenting in place such as:

SELECT DepartmentID

, Name

, GroupName

, ModifiedDate

FROM HumanResources.Department

-- WHERE ModifiedDate > '2012/09/17'

Execute it as a batch and it won't execute the WHERE clause. Hold down ALT and highlight all of the text (including the WHERE clause) and you'll get a subset.

I also use it in comment blocks:

-- Sample Execution:

-- SELECT TOP 1000

-- FROM HumanResources.Department

Use ALT to highlight just the query after the dashes and execute...

re: Using Alt-select in SSMS, Word, and elsewhere

drsql — Tue, 05 Feb 2013 22:02:08 GMT

When I learned about this around the time of my 2008 book, it saved me many many painful formatting casts to make text results look good by just hacking out whitespace like you have described.

You can also paste in a column of text before or after code as well, which is where it becomes even more amazing. So if you have:

and

You can alt select and copy the 123, and then paste after the 1 and end up with

Amazingly useful.

re: Using Alt-select in SSMS, Word, and elsewhere

Valerie — Fri, 07 Jun 2013 19:44:07 GMT

I have been using this for years, but it doesn't seem to work anymore - when I hold down the Alt key I get this annoying "Research" panel. Even if I mouse-down first and then hold the Alt key, it just selects horizontally. Clues?