Anybody having trouble editing text without the arrow keys?

What's the work around for that?

Have you guys tried to edit a long post on this or any other forum, for instance, and you fell hopeless with the iPad virtual keyboard? Sometimes it's impossible to get exactly where you want to?

WTF?

Not really. Long press and a little magnifying glass will come up and allow you to position the cursor. An arrow key would be nice but that works pretty well.

At first, yes, but you get better at it (cursor placement) with practice. It is very frustrating at first, though. One hint is to pause over where you're going. Leave your finger in place until the magnifying glass appears, then drag the cursor into position letter by letter. The iPad bumps the cursor to the front or back of the word when you tap - only the magnifying glass can put you in the middle of a word. Practicing pausing, double taps, and single taps. Especially try pausing over all the keyboard characters, as most have multiple uses. The E key actually gives you ë, é, e, è, ê, ē, ę, and ė, for example.

When you're making a long post on here you can use two fingers to scroll inside the post, I didn't know that until someone told me but I'm a little slow.

I need some arrow keys, I delete way more than I should just to insert a letter or something

Bothered me at first but the magnifying glass is doing fine for me now.

Thank you, that was very useful info.

I got it work, but I definitely need more practice. Bugger, why not arrow keys, maybe together with the special symbols at least?


And thank you all who posted on this thread.

Just a side note on word or letter specific selecting.

Obviously one tap and hold you get the magnifying glass, but another quick selection or editing tool is to double tap then long hold. Once you get the right combo you will notice instead of a round magnifying glass, you get a rectangular magnified text box that you can then drag for more specific word groups or sentences for copying pasting or replacing.

One solution, is KB dock, or Bluetooth Keyboard.

The iPad does recognize the arrow keys on those.
I am hoping to eventually see arrows added to the onscreen KB.

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Useless post above.

Thanks for the other posters who provided solutions. The magnifying glass solution is a great alternative to arrows.

I'm still endlessly frustrated by the magnifying glass. Maybe I need to practice using it a bit more, or I make way too many errors, but I'm just so used to arrow navigation, and since it's so tough to make precise movements and the magnifying glass is so bloody slow to activate and, heaven forbid you screw up the position and have to start again, I just want my arrow keys!

That was one heck of a run-on! Oy!

Yeah, the magnifier works, but its slow and tedious for me. I have yet to find a way to select specific text over remote desktop on another machine. That one really bugs me because you get no magnifier on the remote machine.

Then don't answer. No one forced you to click and type.

I don't have much problem... most of the time. There are certain web pages though where you have to curser up or down to edit. You can't do it with your finger. It just sucks that there is no solution in those cases.

(in my best Rodney King impression) " Can't we all just get along?"

if you trigger the manifying glass and drag it to the bottom or top edge, it will scroll the window.

This was my only issue since I received my iPad. Thank you all for pointing this out. It has stopped me from telling my iPad, "No, not there. Here... NOOOO. NOT THERE!!!" Big help in not looking too crazy.

Arrow keys?

Very frustrating that the arrow keys are missing on the ipad keyboard. It makes no sense why apple decided not to have the arrow keys. I know about the magnifying glass and it works but the arrow keys are a must. I bought the wireless keyboard thinking the reason the arrow keys were missing on the ipad was so we can spend more money on the keyboard. Well, the arrow keys on the wireless keyboard do not work!

I just make the type bigger. It's also easier to read.