TextEdit, Pages, Keynote - non-contiguous text selection / non-consecutive text selection holding command key not possible

Question

Level 1

21 points

TextEdit, Pages, Keynote - non-contiguous text selection / non-consecutive text selection holding command key not possible

Non-contiguous text selection used to be a feature of TextEdit. Now, no longer. Official line is that it is not a supported feature of the app and that it is behaving as expected. It's a feature of Microsoft Word and some other third party apps. Why is it missing from Pages, Keynote and now even TextEdit? I know the functionality exists within the Mac architecture because it is still possible to make non-consecutive text selections in the Script Editor app - that application behaves exactly as TextEditor used to in this regard. You can also select columns of complete words by holding down the option key (as you could with TextEdit until only a few days ago). Please help to make as much noise as possible on this. I have sent several feature requests to apple asking for non-contiguous / non-concecutive text section to be made a feature across all relevant apps - pages, Keynote and TextEdit. Would be great if others could do likewise. I use it frequently.

MacBook Air 13″, macOS 13.1

Posted on Dec 16, 2022 02:44 AM

Reply

Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

mat1696

Level 1

50 points

Dec 18, 2022 06:20 AM in response to Rymaniola

I have been reporting this issue every year since they rewrote iWork back in 2012, I was sure it would get fixed at the next major release... but it didn't (and there has not been any "major release" of iWork anymore).

That's the things that I don't understand with Apple and wonder if they seriously use their software and read user feedbacks... It would seem so straightforward for a document editor to provide such a basic feature... but no.

And as you said it used to be supported by Textedit and not Pages, which is supposed to be much more advanced than the first! Besides, it is still supported by Notes...

Reply

Answer 2

Rymaniola Author

Level 1

21 points

Dec 18, 2022 06:48 AM in response to mat1696

Still supported in Notes - I didn't know that, thank you very much, sir. I have just downloaded a free word processor called Bean which has the features that I'm after and is very streamlined - very fast. I would recommend it as a replacement for TextEdit if, like me, you used the app to manipulate text for placement in Keynote on a daily basis. Still think non-contiguous text selection should be available across all relevant apps. Shame we can't drum up much support on this, though I intend to keep pushing.

Reply

Answer 3

VikingOSX

Level 10

122,124 points

Dec 18, 2022 07:42 AM in response to Rymaniola

The Apple product teams do not participate here so no one can definitively answer your why question about non-contiguous text selection in Apple applications. My suspicion is that the team responsible for TextEdit has standardized on the same library that suppresses this feature in other Apple applications. Apple is not going to recode that library, so if non-contiguous text selection is a show-stopper for you, then use third-party applications that provide it.

One product that provides non-contiguous text selection in plain-text, RTF, or Word documents is the free Bean word processing application. It works on Ventura 13.1. As it has been around for years, Bean is also available on earlier versions of macOS too.

Reply

Answer 4

dialabrain

Level 10

133,529 points

Dec 18, 2022 07:44 AM in response to VikingOSX

VikingOSX wrote:

One product that provides non-contiguous text selection in plain-text, RTF, or Word documents is the free Bean word processing application. It works on Ventura 13.1. As it has been around for years, Bean is also available on earlier versions of macOS too.

Perhaps you need more coffee as well… :)

"Still supported in Notes - I didn't know that, thank you very much, sir.

I have just downloaded a free word processor called Bean which…"

Reply

Answer 5

VikingOSX

Level 10

122,124 points

Dec 18, 2022 07:59 AM in response to VikingOSX

The free LibreOffice suite also supports non-contiguous text selection as its primary goal is to be an MS Office clone. No telling how long the author of Bean plans to support it as he suspended development on it once before several years ago.

Reply

Answer 6

Rymaniola Author

Level 1

21 points

Dec 19, 2022 01:15 AM in response to VikingOSX

Yeah, LibreOffice seems a bit glitchy within my setup - using Magnet and it won't snap into place as expected, for example. Bean also causes a few unexpected behaviours - occasional wheel of death, disappearing cursor etc. For what I'm doing I think utilising the Quick Note hot corner is the most sensible solution moving forwards. Should it really be necessary to jump to and from native apps copying and pasting to get things done though? Perhaps Apple want us to ditch native apps and opt for third party... don't know

Reply