Selecting all in Blender might seem like an easy thing to do but in this article, I will cover all aspects of selecting all, so you have all the knowledge necessary.
In short, to select all in Blender press "A" on the keyboard, and if you want to deselect all press "Ctrl+A" on the keyboard. Another way is to go to The Select Menu and then click "All".
That being said let's now dive deep inside all the cases that are linked to selecting all in Blender.
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Select All in Edit Mode In Blender
In Blender, there are 2 Major modes, one called "Object Mode" and one called "Edit Mode".
- Object Mode: Controls the Meshes as elements and not their components.
- Edit Mode: Controls the components of an object (Vertices, Edges, Faces)
Select All Works both in object mode and in edit mode, Press "Tab" to enter edit mode, and then press "A" It will select all vertices and every component you have chosen ( to switch between components press 1,2,3 on the keyboard).
If you want to select all faces in edit mode, press 3 and then "A" and you will have all faces selected.
Select All Including Hidden Objects In Blender
If you have objects that are hidden, Select All won't work on those hidden objects, first, you have to unhide all hidden objects and then select all.
To hide an object in Blender select it and press "H" on the keyboard, to Unhide all objects press "Alt+H" on the keyboard.
So if you want to select all objects first press "Alt+H" to make sure that nothing is hidden and then press "A".
Select Linked Geometry In Blender
There are cases when you will be in Edit Mode and that object is built from several meshes like the example image below.
If you want to select all the faces of the sphere element for example you cant do that by pressing "A" as that will select all the faces of all the objects.
To select all the faces of the sphere element we should use "Select Linked" and the shortcut for that is "L".
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To use it successfully first you need to have your mouse on top of the faces you want to select and then press "L" on the keyboard.
Select All Toggle In Blender
In Blender, if you want to Select All and Deselect All using only the "A" button, you can do that but first, you have to enable that feature in the preferences menu.
Edit -> Preferences -> Keymap -> Select All Toggles
By enabling this you can use the "A" button as a toggle but please keep in mind the "Ctr+A" is always the deselect all.
Select All In Blender Shortcuts
| Shortcut | Description |
| A | Select All |
| Ctrl+A | Deselect All |
| Hide | H |
| Unhide All | Alt+H |
| L | Select Linked (mouse cursor over selection) |
Conclusion
In conclusion and what to remember, Selecting all in Blender is by pressing the "A" button on the keyboard and pressing "Ctrl+A" when you want to deselect all press "Ctrl+A".
I hope this was a good overview of Selecting in Blender, make sure you share this article if you found it useful.
Check out this tutorial on Merging Vertices in Blender.