Standard 1D TOCSY and NOE experiments have limitations where signals are severely overlapped. Here, two recently published selective excitation methods are evaluated, the first of which uses a chemical shift selective filter to select a single resonance based on its chemical shift, and the second of which is a doubly selective experiment comprising a 1D TOCSY preparation step and subsequent 1D NOE. We also demonstrate the improvement in spectral quality obtained by the use of the zero quantum filter, which is incorporated into both of these experiments. The application of these different methods of selectively exciting overlapped multiplets, to different types of samples is considered.