[LifeTimer]

It would be very handy to be able to make vertical/rectangular selections not only with the mouse (which is currently done by holding down the alt-key on the keyboard and then clicking and dragging with the mouse), but also by using the keyboard only.

For normal “horizontal” selections, as everyone knows, this can be done by holding down the shift-key and then pressing the arrow keys, so reasonably it should be possible to do this for vertical/rectangular selections by holding down the alt-key (or alt + shift if you want to be completely consistent) and then using the arrow keys in the same way, but today this does not work in EmEditor, which feels quite unnecessary and often frustrating. :-(

So, could you please consider adding this simple feature in an upcoming update of EmEditor?

[Yutaka Emura]

Hello,

You can press CTRL + SHIFT + F8 to start the vertical selection, and then press arrow keys.

Thanks,

[LifeTimer]

Ok, thanks, that works. It’s still not nearly as simple, intuitive and consistent as just alt+arrowkeys (or alt+shift+arrowkeys) though, so it would be great if you would consider adding that shortcut too if possible.

[Bill_Stewart]

I think it would be useful also. In the meantime I have emulated this with macros. First macro is verticalSelect.jsee:

if ( (document.selection.Mode & eeModeMask) != eeModeBox ) {
  document.selection.Mode = eeModeBox;
}

Then four different macros for Alt+Shift+Left, Alt+Shift+Right, Alt+Shift+Up and Alt+Shift+Down keystrokes:

#include "verticalSelect.jsee"
document.selection.CharLeft(true);

This macro would be verticalExtendLeft.jsee and you can bind to Alt+Shift+Left. Of course you will also need to create verticalExtendRight.jsee that contains

document.selection.CharRight(true);

and so forth for the other keystrokes. This solution is a little clumsy (and a bit slow because it is macros), but I like it better than switching selection modes.
Bill

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