Stumping the "Jump"

Stumping the “Jump” in Spreadsheet and Document Creation Programs: A Smarter Way to Select Needed Text and/or Data

Perhaps one of the most annoying little “bugs” in most Microsoft software programs (and several other non-Microsoft document/spreadsheet programs) is when the cursor/user interface “jumps” far beyond where you wanted it to go. This tendency is often called “jump”. (For example, “Oh shoot – my cursor just jumped ahead five pages into my Word document – I just wanted to select the next three paragraphs!”) Jump happens when you are using a program like Microsoft Word or Excel and you are trying to select text or data into your clipboard, and as you start to scroll through the data, the cursor suddenly “jumps” much further into your document than you intended. Suppose, for example, that you are trying to select data from rows 30 to 240 in an Excel spreadsheet, and as you start to scroll down from row 30 you suddenly find yourself on row 2754 – this is “jump”!

Jump happens because most computer programs, including most word processing, spreadsheet, and web editing programs were initially built way back in the days of the 25 Mhz IBM 386 processor. Back then, the scroll feature worked pretty well due to the slow speed and power of the processor. Now, of course, the speed and power of computer processors and computer memory is an order of magnitude higher. Usually, this extra speed and power saves you time because it makes programs run faster. But occasionally, an old “relic” behavior pops up in very popular and heavily used programs that can cause this extra speed and power to actually slow you way down. “Jump” is just such a relic.

As the speed and power of the processors have increased, these programs have unfortunately not been updated to keep up – the program and/or computer actually move too fast trying to do what you are asking them to do, and you end up wasting significant (and highly annoying) time backtracking and re-selecting your desired data for your cut/copy and paste operation. And sometimes, it seems this “jump” can happen over and over again when trying to select the same piece of text and/or data, thus making “jump” a real time waster and aggravator for many heavy software users. But there is a way to limit the maddening nature of “jump” and be more efficient at cutting/copying larger blocks of desired text or data.

On a PC, here is how you can “stump the jump”:
1. Very simply, go to the beginning of the text or data that you want to select.2. Do a single left click on your mouse.
3. Then, hold down your “shift” key while you locate the end of the text or data that you want to select (by either moving your mouse up/down, or using the up or down/left or right “arrow” keys). 4. With the “shift” key still held down, left click again. All of your desired text or data should now be selected (and, more importantly, nothing more than you desired to be selected!)

There is also a helpful little keystroke trick that is especially useful with Excel and other spreadsheet users, but can also be useful in MS Word and other word processing program users. When working in a spreadsheet, get your cursor in or near a section of data that you would like to select. Then, press the “End” key one time, and then hold the “Shift” key and use the directional arrows. You can toggle up, down, left or right, and highlight the cells (and only the cells) that you would like to select. This can be very useful when cutting or copying and pasting both actual data, as well as cells that have defined functions and calculations – potentially a real time saver. Try this in your spreadsheet program to see what I’m explaining – follow the suggested steps to a tee, and you’ll see how useful this keystroke combination can be.

Out of curiosity, I tried to see what happened if you followed the same steps in MS Word. Using the “End” key typically just jumps you to the end of the line of text that you are on. But interestingly, if you hold the “Shift” key down (regardless of whether or not you just pushed the “End” key), and then use the arrow keys, you can either select text in the lines directly above or below your cursor location (up/down arrow keys) or directly to the right or left of your cursor location (using the right/left arrow keys). Try this one too – it can be very handy for specific editing/copying/cutting functions in your document creation programs.

Now, you’ll have some very useful and easy to remember strategies for “stumping the jump”. Use that extra saved time and go treat yourself to a cup of coffee or caffeinated soda, so you can get “jumpy” in a completely different way!