software, windows

Annoying Word 2007 problem: can’t select text

368 Comments

I run Word 2007 on Vista. Today I hit a curious problem. Word opened, but something was badly wrong. I could not select text with the mouse. The document scroll bar did not work. Word crashed on exit. And going into Options – Addins, I could not navigate beyond the “Popular” section.

After several crashes an Office Diagnostics wizard popped up and offered to help. Kind of it. It chugged through numerous tests and finally told me it could not see anything wrong. Never mind.

Checking the newgroups, I found fellow-sufferers but no solution. I decided to be methodical. I started Word in safe mode. (winword /a). It worked. Probably an add-in. I went to the COM add-ins and tried to disable them. Message: “The connected state of Office add-ins registered in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE cannot be changed”. OK, registry then. Navigated to:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office\Word\Addins

Found three add-ins listed. I changed the value of the LoadBehavior key from 3 to 0 for each add-in.

Word now worked OK, but still crashed on closing. I found I could restore two of the add-ins without problems. The guilty party: OfficePrintAddIn, a component of Flash Paper.

I had a look at active templates. There was one called FlashPaperWordUITemplate.2302.dot. If I tried to unload it, Word crashed. Perhaps it needs the related COM add-in to be loaded. I closed Word, found the template file, and deleted it. Everything is fine now.

A quicker route might be to uninstall Macromedia Flash Paper, unless you use this of course.

I’m still puzzled about why this problem only showed up today. I’d not made any changes to Flash Paper or Word that I’m aware of. And I don’t blame Macromedia (now Adobe) for this; Word 2007 did not exist when this Flash add-in was released.

Posted in the hope that it saves someone else some time.

 

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368 thoughts on “Annoying Word 2007 problem: can’t select text”

  2. hey man, thanks for this so much
    i went to my hkey and found an add in for my snagit, and i changed the value of that one to 0 and also for my other add ins
    i know have the mouse capability but it still crashes after closing
    btw i’m running windows 7 32bit and Microsoft Office 2007
    once again thanks

  3. I too had this problem for a few months but only today finally decided to do something. As I use Snagit, I followed Andre advice, but I deleted the whole Snagit entry in the HK….Word. Did not know what value to change and how (so many value options). The result is the same as Andre posted.

  4. thanks – had/have exactly the same issue and this is the first useful suggestions. I’m still concerned about the fact Word doesn’t close cleanly (restarts). Suggests to me that there is a background library problem. I’ll keep looking, but at least I can now work on my assignment.

  5. I too am having problems with word 2007 crashing on close. We develop our own addin for Word and have never had as many problems as now. A sure way to create a crash on close is to try to disable/re-enable the vertical scrollbar. Whether doing this by “hand” in the options panel or programmatically, it sets up Word for a crash as soon as you close the document. I’m worried that there is a memory corruption issue that is endemic to Word 2007 itself.

    Has anyone definitively solved a crash-on-close problem once it has appeared?

    – P

  7. I simply went to Add/Remove Programs control panel, selected Snag-It, and x-ed out all the add-in options. My mouse text selection is back to normal. Thanks to Andre for making the SnagIt addin connection.

  9. Hey thanks ONEz worked perfectly! Easy and simple–painless. Problem solved, thanks again.

  11. Thank you!!! I can’t thank you enough! I’ve been having many problems and I tried so many things and they didn’t work but this did! THANK YOU!!

  12. Why doesn’t word 2007 automatically replace i with I? How can I correct this wthout ending up with stuff lIke thIs??

  13. I followed a link from another forum site who had problems where their mouse could not select text on their Outlook. As I went walked through the article I found out there was no problem with the add-ins but a text formatting keyboard shortcut I might have activated. I use the keyboard more often than the mouse (was stuck on a workstation with no mouse back in high school). Anyway, all I did was type a random text from the compose window and selecting the text by holding Shift + arrow(left) then the “select” cursor was back and I can highlight with the mouse again! Hope this helps for those who don’t have add-in problems.

  14. I like a product that simply works. I’ve been using Word for decades and Word 7 really is a beast. It loads very very slowly, goes to hourglass mode for no apparent reason in the middle of using, takes forever to close, and often just plan crashes. The time lost waiting for this product is extremely, especially given the “maturity” of Word. Word 2003 wasn’t a miracle, but 2007, with its’ new layout added to the problems above, just sucks. Now let me go blow more time reading the Microsoft fixes.

  15. Thank you. This was driving me nuts. My only solution had been uninstall/re-install, and after a few weeks the problem cropped up again. I’m ready for a competing product!

  16. There is an issue with the 64 bit version of windows and office.

    You will need to look in the HKLM/SOFTWARE/Wow6432Node/Microsoft/Office/12/word/addins
    This is where you will find those pesky Addins !!

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