How do I enable the column selection mode in Eclipse

Question

News wrote that Eclipse 3 5 finally supports column selection   Unfortunately I don t know HOW to enable it  I tried pressing the ALT-key like I am used to in Visual Studio and all other Microsoft products but that had no effect    How can I mark a vertical block in Eclipse

User · Answer

First of all your mouse key must be focus in editor to enable Toggle Block Selection Mode

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Click on toggleButton as shown in figure and it will enable Vertical selection. After selection toggle it again.

User · Answer

You can enable and disable column editing mode via the keyboard shortcut ALT-SHIFT-A     Once enabled you can then use either the mouse to select a block of text  or the keyboard using SHIFT  like a normal keyboard select  except the selection will now be in a block      If you ve changed your default font for text editing  entering column editing mode will probably change your screen font to the default column editing font  which is probably different to your changed font   To change the font when in column editing mode  go to the menu and select Window - gt  Preferences  then in the tree on the left hand side  pick General - gt  Appearance - gt  Colors and Fonts  and then pick Basic - gt  Text Editor Block Selection Font on the right hand side tree   You can then select the font to be consistent with your  not in column editing mode  font

User · Answer

A different approach   The vrapper plugin emulates vim inside the Eclipse editor  One of its features is visual block mode which works fine inside Eclipse   It is by default mapped to Ctrl-V which interferes with the paste command in Eclipse  You can either remap the visual block mode to a different shortcut  or remap the paste command to a different key  I chose the latter  remapped the paste command to Ctrl-Shift-V to match my terminal s behavior

User · Answer

On Windows and Linux  it s AltShiftA  as RichieHindle pointed out   On OSX it s OptionCommandA    A    It s also worth noting that the two modes can have different font preferences  so if you ve changed the default text font  it can be jarring to toggle block selection modes and see the font change   Finally  the  search commands   Ctrl3 or Command3  pop-up will find it for you if you type block   This is useful if you use the feature just frequently enough to forget the hotkey

User · Answer

Press Alt   Shift   A Observe that the screen zooms out Make selection using the mouse Press Alt   Shift   A to go back to the old mode

User · Answer

As RichieHindle pointed out the shortcut for column  block  selection is Alt Shift A  The problem I ran into is that the Android SDK on Eclipse uses 3 shortcuts that all start with Alt Shift A  so if you type that  you ll be given a choice of continuing with D  S  or R   To solve this I redefined the column selection as Alt Shift A A  Alt  Shift  A pressed together and then followed by a subsequent A   To do this go to Windows  gt  Preferences then type keys or navigate to General  gt  Keys  Under the Keys enter the filter text of block selection to quickly find the shortcut listing for toggle block selection  Here you can adjust the shortcut for column selection as you wish

User · Answer

Additionally  you can change the keys view window -  preferences then type   keys  and when the key preference page opens you can type  toggle block selection  and voila

User · Answer

To activate the cursor and select the columns you want to select use       Windows    Alt Shift A      Mac  command   option   A      Linux-based OS    Alt Shift A   To deactivate  press the keys again   This information was taken from DJ s Java Blog

[eclipse] How do I enable the column selection mode in Eclipse?

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