Delete selection vertically leaving rest of line in place

[fly-wire]

I have a long file and want to delete characters leaving the other characters on the row in place and moving characters from next rows up. eg: Deleting first two characters on third line.

11111111
22222222
33333333
44444444
55555555
66666666

becomes

11111111
22222222
44333333
55444444
66555555
666666

[Claudia Frank]

@Fly-Wire

1. delete your characters
2. put the cursor into the next line, press and hold shift+alt
3. click with the mouse into the position of the last line holding the data to be move
4. ctrl+x
5. go up to the line with the initial delete chars
6. ctrl+v

Took longer this to write than to do.

Cheers
Claudia