Unable to select items on outliner

Question

I'm new to blender and I'm struggling with a few things that are probably tiny but I just can't quite get them. The biggest issue is selecting different parts of the mesh in the outliner. Specifically, selecting to make the name white on the outliner and allow me to edit that part. I click on the grey symbol with three white dots in a triangle. 1 out of 100 times it works.

The second issue is every once in awhile the texture of what I'm working on disappears. I feel like a button accidentally gets pushed and I'm unsure how to turn it back.

Before:

After:

Answer 1

In the Outliner, when you click on the object mesh icon, it allows you to enter in Edit mode and to edit the object mesh, it doesn't allow you to precisely select one part of the mesh if that's what you're trying. If you don't see anything when you click on this icon, maybe it's because your object is not visible on your 3D View, it can be on another layer for example. Also, when you try to edit an object, why don't you select it and press tab to enter in Edit mode? This is the classic method.

About your display problem: You must accidentally press Z, it makes you switch between Rendered (or Material) mode and Wireframe view. See what happens on the bottom horizontal bar of your 3D View.

Answer 2

The Outlined is a bit of a different animal from the 3D view, and the click behavior in one isn't the same as the click behavior in the other, and the Outliner can indicate different object selected than the 3D view. Selecting the white triangle will take you to that object and put you into Edit mode.

Select the white triangle to the right of the name to enter Edit Mode for an object. Select the yellow triangle to the left of the name to select that object in the Object mode. The yellow triangles to the right of any name are the child objects, and you can select those by clicking them but it's harder to remember the exact order so usually people expand the object to see the children. It gets confusing when you click the empty space to either side of an item in the outliner, because that only highlights the name but doesn't select it in any way. To select a highlighted object(s), right-click and choose Select. The highlighting option is available because it makes it easier to select multiple objects at the same time (using B to make a box, or shift-clicking). The highlighting ability is redundant and it would be better for Blender to immediately select in Object mode when you highlight (which is similar how Windows and most other software works), but that's the way Blender 2.79 does it.