How To Select All On a Mac

If you’re having trouble working out how to select all on a Mac, here we show you all the ways to select all files, Photos, Word documents and similar.

Being able to select all items is useful if you want to copy, delete or move certain items from one place to the other.

You can select allby using keyboard shortcuts or by using the Trackpad and mouse.

Here we show you all the ways to select all on a Mac including on the latest versions of macOS and Apple Silicon Macs.

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Select All With a Keyboard Shortcut

If you want to select all files or items in a folder, open the folder and press CMD + A together.

This will select all items in the folder, regardless of how many files are in it.

This method is excellent for moving a large number of files from one place to another or just mass deleting them in a few clicks.

Select Items One at a Time

If you are looking to only extract certain files from a folder rather than selecting everything at once, all you need to do is to click on each individual file you want while holding down the CMD key on your keyboard.

This causes the selected files to be highlighted in blue that you want to to select.

You can deselect the files you have clicked on by clicking anywhere away from the files.

Select All by Clicking and Dragging

If you want to quickly move a group of files from a folder, you can do so by simply clicking on any empty space withing the folder and dragging your cursor over the files you want to select while holding down your Trackpad or mouse key.

Once you’ve selected the files you want, you can easily drag the files and drop them into a different folder or bulk delete them all at once.

Select All by Selecting First to Last

When dealing with a large number of items or files that are arranged from top to bottom, you can quickly select all of them from first to last in just a few clicks.

• Click on the first file you want to select while holding the Shift key.
• Scroll down to the last item you want to select and click on it while holding the Shift key.

When you do this, all the files between the first and last item you chose will be highlighted and automatically selected.

Select All in Photos

Here are all the ways you can select all in Photos for Mac:

• One way to select all in Photos is simply to click and drag the cursor over all of the images.
• Alternatively, you can simply hit the Cmd + A keys to select all photos
• You can also select all in Photos by selecting the first image while holding the Shift key. After that, select the last image in Photos while making sure you are still holding down the Shift key. Every Photo in between the first and last one will be selected.

Finally, you can also use the Edit option in the top menu bar of Photos and click on the Select All option.

Select All in Word

Here are all the ways you can select all in Word for Mac:

• Click and drag the cursor over all the text or images in a Word document to select all.
• Alternatively, you can press the CMD + A keys to select all in a Word document.
• Select the first word or letter in your Word file while holding the Shift key. After that, select the last word or letter in the Word document making sure you are holding down the Shift key. All of the text in between will be selected using this method.

Finally, you can also go to the Edit option in the top menu bar on Word for Mac and click on the Select All option. Alternatively, in the Ribbon across the top of Microsoft Word you can also click on Select and then Select All.

What to Do If Select All Is Not Working

If the select all function is not working, here are some troubleshooting steps to try and fix it.

• If you’re using the keyboard shortcut for Select All, make sure you are using the correct keyboard shortcut for select all which is the Command Key (CMD) and the letter A at the same time.
• Make sure the folder or application you’re using is active and in focus or else the select all shortcut might not work. All you need to do is simply click on the window of the folder or application to make it active.
• If you are not able to select all in a particular application like Photos, relaunch the app or check if there are any updates available for that application.
• Check your keyboard preferences to make sure there are no custom shortcuts that are conflicting with the CMD + A shortcut. To do so, click on the Apple logo in the top left side of your screen go to System Preferences > Keyboard > Shortcuts and look for any conflicting shortcuts.

 

• Try booting your Mac into Safe Mode by restarting and holding down the Shift key until the Apple logo appears. This will disable all third-party extensions that might be interfering with the selecting all function.
• You can also try to simply restart your Mac to help clear any temporary glitches that might be causing the select all function to not work properly.