Mouse doesn't work in Microsoft Word to select text, or highlight text to copy or add features such as bold/italics/underline.

Question

After pasting an E-mail into a Microsoft Word document (which I do all the time), my mouse stopped working to click anywhere in the document and it won't allow me to use the side scroll bar.  I can still click on tabs and commands up top and the page up and down buttons, but I can't highlight text to underline/bold/italics or to copy or move around in the document.  I use these features all the time and am very frustrated.  I can still do all of these things in other applications such as E-mail, Facebook, Internet but not in Word.  Please help.  I have already checked my mouse settings and drivers and they are all up-to-date without errors.  I have restarted my computer; the only next step I can think of is reinstalling Microsoft Office Professional 2007.  I appreciate any assistance you can provide.  Respectfully, Julie

Answer 1

Hi,

These are the current Support Forums.

Check with the Office Experts here : (re-ask your question in the appropriate groups)

Answers - Office Forums - Word

http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/office/default.aspx#tab=2

Answers - Office Forum - Installing, Upgrading, and Activating Microsoft Office Products

http://social.answers.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/officeinstall/threads?lc=1033&filter=answered

Answers - Office Forums

http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/office/default.aspx

Hope this helps.

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The below are no longer supported.

Check with the experts here :

Discussions in Word Application Errors

http://www.microsoft.com/office/community/en-us/default.mspx?dg=microsoft.public.word.application.errors&lang=en&cr=US

Office Discussion Groups

http://www.microsoft.com/office/community/en-us/FlyoutOverview.mspx

and here :

Discussions in microsoft.public.word.application.errors

http://www.microsoft.com/communities/newsgroups/list/en-us/default.aspx?dg=microsoft.public.word.application.errors&cat=en\_us\_f09268b3-8479-4cea-8037-d168d96833ac&lang=en&cr=us

Welcome to Microsoft Discussion Groups

http://www.microsoft.com/communities/newsgroups/list/en-us/default.aspx?guid=1A61081E-1F66-5F7F-B5BA-04767E55A63B

Hope this helps.

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Rob - Bicycle - Mark Twain said it right.

Answer 2

I had the exact same problem described above.  I fixed it by rt-clicking on my launch button for MS Word and selecting "change settings for all users" and then selecting "run as administrator"  click ok and then click ok again.  Then launch Word.  Now I can finally select the text I want to work with.  I hope this helps!

Answer 3

Same problem here for 3 days now and I have solved the problem after 1 hour of tinkering around my PC. Microsoft Word is the culprit. Here are the steps below:

1. Open Word and go to tools
2. Go to Options
3. Go to Show category at the top
4. Put a check on highlight/status bar/animated text/horizontal scroll bar/vertical scroll bar/ windows in taskbar/field codes

5.Make sure that in field shading ---"when selected" is chosen

6.Hit "ok"

7. voila your other browser firefox or IE or Open office  esp Microsoft Word will be back to Normal:)

Hope this helps and is not too late---I see all your posts are from last year's.

Answer 4

An additonal one:

 The above - Microsoft Word is the problem, but there are a number of sources. In my case, it was PDFMCustom.dot, some weird offshoot of Adobe Acrobat or Distiller....

Every time word was started, this file would show up in the users's temp directory....(XP c:\documents and .....\username\local settings\temp) and would go away when word was shutdown. It would only cause the relevant mouse problem after Reply To was hit in Microsoft Outlook, to ANY message, in ANY folder.  My fix, while crude, worked nicely, but takes a bit of DOS skill. Attempts to get Word to NOT load this were fruitless.

Open Word                                     

Look at Templates and Addins           (Tools/Templates and Addins)

Locate the rogue template                 (in my case PDFMCustom.dot)

Close word and outlook                     (if open)

run Command Prompt                      (Start/ Programs/Accessories/Command Prompt)

change to the TEMP directory            (CD Locals~1\temp      for most users)

look for the file PDFMCustom.dot       (dir /a/x PDF*.*               (or whatever works for your template) )

copy the file to a backup                   (copy pdf*.dot pdf*.tod)  (no reason to destroy useful information) )

create a new file of the same name    (copy con PDFMCustom.dot     Hit enter 3 times, then {Ctrl-Z} )

check the file length                          (dir /a/x pdf*.dot )

change the attributes                        ( attrib +r +s +h pdf*.dot  ) (make it read only and system so Word can't clobber it)

close the command prompt               (Exit )

open word 

You'll get an error message that the template is not working. it will be moved to disabled, where it can be recovered later with

Help/About Microsoft Word/Disabled

(and you'd have to reverse the DOS fun above)

and yes, I checked, there is no problem creating or working with PDF's

/lwo

Answer 5

OK i had this problem and another problem that caused this problem making word unusable for me. After several hours of research (thx microsoft), I found a solution that worked for me.

I should say this applies to Word 2007 running on a Windows 7 box. Can't speak to other versions.

First I was having continuous crashes of Word when exiting (only) and it got to the point where it would crash every time I closed Word. Then this morning I couldn't even select text in an open Word file though my mouse worked fine everywhere else.

To solve the selecting problem using my mouse I deleted some temporary files that had been left open by Word in the Templates directory at: C:\Users\Dave\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Templates. These files start with a tilda (~) character and look something like: ~$Normal.dotm or ~$NormalEmail.dotm. Word of course must be closed when deleting these files. These are temp files and should be deleted by Word when it closes. If Word closes unnaturally like when it crashes, it can leave these open.

I deleted these and every ~*.dotm and ~*.dotx file i could find on my computer.

Voila. I can now use my mouse to select text and as usual in every way.

That was half my problem. Now for the crashing problem which can and did cause these temporary artifacts to remain on my computer. After much reading, the best solution seemed to be to delete the registry key called "Data" at: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\12.0\Word\Data.

Note: Make sure you backup this key by right clicking on it and exporting it to a file on your hard drive. Then right click it and delete it. Word will recreate this key/folder when you bring it up again.

After doing this, Word is back running as it should be.

I think all of this may have been precipitated by a power outage we had that killed my system with all my apps open - not good for open files.

By the way, before doing these things that did work, I did things that didn't work like going through all of microsoft's detection and "solution" finding process. None of that helped. I uninstalled and reinstalled Office 2007 to no avail. Finally I found the above process and am now back up running.

Well I hope this works for you. It did for me! :)