Cursor Microsoft Word 2016

Question

This has been posted before but there was no solution. In Word 2016, the cursor changes to a small vertical two dot cursor when I move my mouse.  When I click on text, the insertion point is normal.  But the two dots are so light it is difficult to see where my mouse is when I am moving it on the screen.  It was not this way when I originally installed the Office 2016 package last year, but changed at some point.  I suspect I hit a key combination that changed it, but don't know how to set it back. A solution was suggest to change the pointer in Window 10 on the mouse settings. This did not work.

The dots only appear in Microsoft Word.  Works normal in other Office applications.

Answer 1

If it happens on a single word document I can advice to copy and paste all of it on a new document and save, it could be a corrupt file. If the problem persist then copy text to notepad (to remove all formatting) and back to word document.

Answer 2

Thank you for this. Zooming in partially fixed it  but when reverting to 100% the two dots appear over text but a normal pointer appears over blank space just before or after the text in the paragraph.  Also observed it appears to be on this one Word document. Other documents are not having the problem.  Is there a document setting that could have been triggered or could the file be corrupt?

Appreciate the response and help.

Answer 3

Hi Jeff,

I am an independent advisor, and I am trying to help other users in Community with my experience in Microsoft products.

Reducing the Graphic Hardware Performance Level into a lower setting is to disable cursor and bitmap accelerations.

For this purpose, you need to go into control panel in theme and display settings to reduce Hardware acceleration.

This may be helpful in solving some common mouse pointer problems.

Do let me know if you have any more question or require further help.

Thanks and regards

Avinash

Answer 4

Hello Jeff, what you experience sometimes it's a defect related to the zoom level on the word page. You can try to zoom page to maximum (or use control key and mouse wheel) and then zoom back to 100%. Also it could be related to some installed software for capturing text like Snagit so if you have it installed try to close it or uninstall it. If you still experience the problem I can research further.