Selection tools

Expression Design offers four basic tools for selecting objects on your page.

• Selection tool  The Selection tool  (press V) lets you select one or more whole objects in your document. You can click on an object to select it, or drag a marquee over one or more objects to select them. You don't have to surround the object fully to select it. The marquee just needs to touch it.
• Group Select tool  The Group Select tool  (press SHIFT+A) works essentially the same as the Selection tool, except in the case of groups (object groups or clipping mask groups). When you click a group with the Selection tool, you always select the entire group. This tool lets you select one or more objects inside a group.
• Direct Selection tool and Lasso Selection tool  While the Direct Selection tool  (press A) and the Lasso Selection tool  (press Q) are designed for selecting one or more nodes within a path or shape, you can also use them to select one or more whole objects by clicking or dragging a marquee. If you click or drag a marquee over a node, just the node or nodes are selected. Otherwise, the whole object is selected.

Other selection tools

The Fill Transform tool  also lets you select an object, though it is primarily designed to select a path containing an image or gradient. After selecting a shape with this tool, any transformations you make (like dragging the rotate and scale handles) will affect the contents of the object, not the object itself.

While the Paintbrush tool  is usually used for drawing shapes, it can select objects on your page, too. Just click an object to select it.

Deselecting

You can deselect all objects on your page by clicking an empty space in your document with any of these tools. Alternately, you can click  Deselect from the Select menu (or press CTRL+SHIFT+A). For more information about menu commands for selecting objects, see Menu commands.

Adding or removing selections

Once you have selected one object or group, you can add another object or group to the selection. With the Selection tool, the Group Select tool, or either of the Direct Selection tools, hold down the SHIFT key while clicking another object or while dragging out a marquee. Similarly, you can press SHIFT+click or SHIFT+drag to remove objects from a selection.

The Group Select tool has one additional feature for adding to a selection. As described here, you can click once on an object within a group to select just that object. If you click the object a second time, it selects all the objects in that group. If the group itself is a member of another group, clicking a third time will select all other members of that "upper-level" group.

Selection tool switch

If you need to select an object while a different tool is selected (like a drawing or transformation tool), you can hold down the CTRL key to temporarily switch to the Selection or Direct Selection tool (whichever tool was last used). For example, while using any tool you can press CTRL+click on an object to select all its nodes. When you let go of the CTRL key, the nodes remain selected, but the tool reverts back to whatever is selected in the Toolbox.

Pressing CTRL+SHIFT+click on an object adds or removes that object from the selection.