Vertical text selection

Want to select that list of genes without the pain of closing and reopening the file in Excel? Diana Higgins at Windows Fanatics reminds us to do this using most text editors (it can also be done in Word). Simply hold down the Alt key (or the option key in Macs) when making a selection.

Unfortunately this little trick doesn't work in Microsoft's notepad and I wasn't able to find such a key in Gnome for Linux either. Does anyone else out there know?

UPDATE: Here are some tips from the comments

• In editplus (at least in windows) the same can be done with Alt+C.
• In Vim you can use the Ctrl-v combination and then HJKL (or arrow) keys to adjust your selection.
• Alt-mouse drag will select columns in TextPad
• Option Drag works with TextWrangler on Mac too. Cool Tip. I was looking for similar.