No, he's talking about using Alt+Drag to select a vertical section of the
text. Sometimes this can be a tabbed column, but it can also be something as
simple as the line of at the beginning of each line of text pasted
from an email. I don't have any trouble doing that; what drives me crazy is
not being able to Alt+double-click to select an entire table any more.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
Word MVP FAQ site: http://word.mvps.org
Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so
all may benefit.

"CyberTaz" wrote in message
...
Hi Jay-

Are you referring to newspaper-type columns or columns in a table?

If table columns, you can 1) Click at the top edge of the column to select
it, and/or 2) go to ToolsCustomize and either a)select All Commands from
left column & drag TableSelectColumn to a toolbar as a button, or b) click
the Keyboard button, select the command in the same way, and assign a
keystroke to it.

If newspaper columns, have you tried placing the insertion point at the
beginning or end of the column & then holding Shift while you click at the
opposite end of the column?

HTH |:)

"Jay Wilson" wrote:

I am a mainframe programmer who often uses Word as a scratch pad and a
tool
to review reports. I frequently want to highlight a column of text,
sometimes
only one column. When I use the Alt + click to attempt to highlight that
one
column, research pane starts. It works fine for 2 columns and greater.