Sun 23 Apr 2006
I am sure you have seen list box in many S60 applications, such as Contacts, Messaging, Notes, Gallery and many more. How do you usually select multiple items? The common way to do that is by selecting Options | Mark/unmark | Mark menu. If you want to select 10 items, you have to do it 10 times. Is there a faster way to do that? Yes, there is….
I am sure you have seen list box in many S60 applications, such as Contacts, Messaging, Notes, Gallery and many more. How do you usually select multiple items? The common way to do that is by selecting Options | Mark/unmark | Mark menu. If you want to select 10 items, you have to do it 10 times. Is there a faster way to do that? Yes, there is….
Here is the trick:
- Firstly, highlight the first item you want to select.
- Press Edit key (
) on your phone. While still pressing Edit key, press Down key to select the next item. Now you have two items selected. If you press Down key again (while still pressing Edit key), the next item will be selected. It is faster than selecting Options menu, isn’t it? - You can also press Up key to select one or more previous items.

That’s how we select contiguous items. How can we select random items?
- Firstly, highlight the first item.
- Then go to the next other item.
- Press Edit key and OK key at the same time. If you don’t know what OK key is, it is the center key of your joystick. Now you have two items selected.
- You can go to the next other item and once again press Edit key and OK key at the same time. Now you have three items selected.
Here is the trick:
- Firstly, highlight the first item you want to select.
- Press Edit key (
) on your phone. While still pressing Edit key, press Down key to select the next item. Now you have two items selected. If you press Down key again (while still pressing Edit key), the next item will be selected. It is faster than selecting Options menu, isn’t it? - You can also press Up key to select one or more previous items.

That’s how we select contiguous items. How can we select random items?
- Firstly, highlight the first item.
- Then go to the next other item.
- Press Edit key and OK key at the same time. If you don’t know what OK key is, it is the center key of your joystick. Now you have two items selected.
- You can go to the next other item and once again press Edit key and OK key at the same time. Now you have three items selected.
April 24th, 2006 at 2:39 pm
Thanks very much for the advice. I just hate it *so* much that Nokia hasn’t made these public in their User Guides! What a waste of my time for the last 4 years! Screw them, really.
April 24th, 2006 at 8:16 pm
I don’t know the reason why this is not documented. But I agree this should be mentioned somewhere in the documentation.
The interesting thing is that I forgot from where I got this tip…
June 2nd, 2006 at 9:48 pm
[...] Selecting multiple items in a list. [...]
January 3rd, 2007 at 9:04 am
Thanks Antony… this is a timesaver!