Problem

It can be very frustrating to manually surround an existing piece text, e.g. click me, with an HTML tag such as <a> in IntelliJ IDEA.

When you open a tag in front of the text you want to enclose, IDEA typically closes that tag right away, which is not what you want:

<a></a>click me

This leaves you to either Ctrl-C,Ctrl-V the closing tag to its intended location or delete it and manually add it after the text again.

Solution

Select the text click me in your editor and hit Ctrl-Alt-T which opens the Surround With Live Template selection, where Surround With <tag></tag> in HTML/JSP should be preselected. Hit Enter and you will get <>click me</> with the cursor inside the opening <>. As you type the tag name the closing tag will be added as well:

<a>click me</a>

https://www.jetbrains.com/idea/help/wrapping-a-tag-example-of-applying-surround-live-templates.html