Tech Issue: Cursor runs left in MS Word document. After it reaches the beginning document, MS Word is stuck minimized/inactive

Question

I'm on ASUS laptop, Windows 10.

This has happened to me several times while I was typing in MS Word document. Suddenly, after a certain keypress or something, my cursor started running left as if I was holding down the left arrow key. Nothing I did could stop it, be it pressing Page Down, End, right arrow, etc. When I switched to other windows and back, the cursor was shown top-left of the document (shown in small window demo when I hovered over MS Word on the start bar), and I could not get the minimized MS Word to come back active after that. The only thing I could do was right-clicking it on the start bar and XClose Window, and let it go Not Responding, and try to recover my document later.

Answer 1

Hi,

To better assist you, we'd like to get the following information:

• Which version of Office are you using?
• When did you encounter this issue?
• Did you install some programs or applications?
• Did you make any changes on your computer's configuration?

Let's try to open your Word in safe mode. Starting Microsoft Word in safe mode allow you to safely use it when it has encountered certain problems, through this we can identify if a certain application causes the problem. To start Microsoft Word in safe mode, please follow these steps:

1. Press Windows key + R.
2. In the Run box, Type winword /safe.
3. Click OK.

Keep us posted.

Answer 2

• I am using Word 2016.
• At work, when I was typing up a long document.
• Besides MS Office and Adobe software, no, since my laptop has very limited disk space.
• No, I did not. But I did use AHK script that I wrote myself for convenience purpose. The script contains hotstrings and script-reload commands which I use in typing.

I'll try to work in safe mode and see if the problem persists, although it doesn't happen too often so it might take quite a while to conclude whether the problem has been fixed. Thank you very much.

Also, another MS-related key problem which happens more frequently is that when I type something, the first letter of the word often gets doubled or tripled as if I was pressing down on the button for too long, which I am certain is not the case, because I need to deliberately hold down the key for at least 0.5 seconds before my computer recognizes it as a 'held' key and starts producing the same letter in a row.

Answer 3

This could be a hardware issue. Try another keyboard and see if the problem persists.

If the problem turns out not to be hardware-related, it might be caused by a faulty add-in. Follow the steps to troubleshoot COM and Startup add-ins in the article at https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/921541 .