When you're editing text, you may need to copy or move words, sentences, or entire paragraphs from one place to another. As a shortcut, you can use the mouse to drag and drop text within nearly every program, such as word processors (like Microsoft Word or Pages) and email programs (like Mail).
Use these steps to drag and drop text:
Start TextEdit. (Double-click the TextEdit icon in the Applications folder.) The TextEdit window appears.
Type a few sentences of text, and then use the mouse to select some text to drag it to a new location.
Holding down the left mouse button, drag the mouse and the selected text to a new location. The cursor moves to show you where your text will appear when you release the left mouse button.
Release the left mouse button to drop the selected text.
If you repeat these steps but hold down the option key while dragging the mouse, you'll copy and paste the selected text, instead of moving it. You can tell when dragging and dropping is copying, rather than moving, an item because during a copy, a plus sign appears inside a green circle near the pointer as you move the mouse.
To see how dragging and dropping text works to copy text, try the following:
Start TextEdit. (Double-click the TextEdit icon in the Applications folder.) The TextEdit window appears.
Type three paragraphs of text.
Select the third (last) paragraph.
Move the mouse pointer over the selected text, hold down the Option key, and drag your selected text below the first paragraph. Your selected text appears as a "ghost image," as shown in Figure 11-1.
Release the left mouse button to move your copied text to the new location.