Understanding what goes on with textarea selection with JavaScript, Replace selected text from input fields on button click. Does picking feats from a multiclass archetype work the same way as if they were from the "Other" section? What was the last Mac in the obelisk form factor? Note: This post is over a year old and so . when you do document.getelementbyid(idoftextarea); it return object of textarea element, which id we passed on the getelementbyidtextarea object have property selectionstart and selectionendselectionstart which say from where selection start , its integer value selectionend which say from where selection end, its integer valueso substring The function I linked to should just replace your current. when you do document.getElementById (idoftextarea); it return object of textarea Element, which id we passed on the getElementById textarea object have property selectionStart and selectionEnd selectionStart which say from where selection start , its integer value selectionEnd which say from where selection end, its integer value As for the currently focused element, use How to get the selected text in a textrarea using raw JavaScript or jQuery? I would also like to change the background-color of the selected text in v-textarea. selectionStart If you are using jQuery, you may want to look at the light weight jQuery RTE Plugin by Batiste Bieler. To select the multiple elements with the same data attribute name, we need to use the document.querySelectorAll() method by passing a [data-attribute] as an argument. Isn't there a Then, when I click a button, I build the substring myself. The answer to your second question is yes. . So when I select "Some" I expect to have this in the alert popup "Score" Sorry if my question was unclear! http://snipplr.com/view/775/getselection/. It's not a duplicate, I need the text that is currently selected in the textarea. http://curiositybeyondcontrol.blogspot.in/2012/04/get-selected-text-from-text-box-using.html, http://www.tek-tips.com/viewthread.cfm?qid=1209522. Share. The field selection jQuery plugin should provide what you requested. Indeed its giving me whole text of textarea instead of selected text. Located in createTask.html Use getSelectedText () to get the selected text. Change the selector (be more specific) if you don't want all