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”

  1. Flash Paper or Flash Player?

    I’ve never heard of Flash Paper. Sounds fun. Except I’ve no idea why you’d want Flash in a word processor…

  2. >>>After several crashes an Office Diagnostics wizard popped up and offered to help.

    You make it sound like Mr Clippy offering to help you write a letter :-).

    It is really important to point out that when anything crashes in Windows and the “Send this error report to Microsoft” dialog is generated then we should be hitting the Send button. Microsoft takes the information from this tool and use it to fix problems.

    Regards

    John
    Roundtrip Solutions

  3. > Flash Paper

    It’s Flash Paper. At the time we thought Macromedia wanted to compete with Acrobat…

    Tim

  4. It appears that many different types of add-ins are causing this. For me the culprit was a Laserfiche add-in. So the question becomes, is this a problem with Word or is it a problem with the add-ins?

  5. This blog entry saved me from going insane. As soon as I disabled the LF plug in, Word worked as it should. Whether or not it’s Microsoft’s fault for not supporting the LF plugin, it’s definitely their fault for not failing gracefully.

  6. I had 2 desktops running Office 2007 on Vista and both within a couple of days of other had word crashing on starting up. I could not rectify the problem with inbuilt MS office diagnostics help, neither would reinstalling Office help. On one I had to install Office 2003 to enable schoolkid to complete homework.On the other desktop I failed to uninstall Office and problem is unresolved. Meanwhile I had been building another windows vista desktop onto which I installed Office 12 as well. Word crashed on startup after about 72 hrs of use. I cannot locate normal.dot file to change it. It’s getting somewhat scary that a well established program is behaving in such a manner.

  7. I was in the office beta program. In beta1 there was an issue when I started up word it was always zooming to 15%. Pretty annoying. Now I had both mouse and crash issues with word. Reinstall did not help. I also found that mouse and select problems were caused by plugins. Not the one mentioned here. Crash was still there, not being able to get rid off it.
    I found this trick in my emails with the beta team.

    It helped me:

    . Close Word and Outlook
    2. Start / Run and type regedit
    3. Navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USERSoftwareMicrosoftOffice12.0WordData
    4. Rename this key.
    5. Restart Word

  8. Well I’ve looked over the replies and tried to replicate it to my setup. But no luck.

    I’m running Windows XP and office 2007. When I use word, it’s using just about 50% CPU ALL the time? It locks up every now and then, it’s impossible to save, unless I change the document name.
    So basically I can work around 5 minutes and thats it??
    I just hate the new office word…. why must it be so hard to make something work thats so old???

    I’m going back to using notes…. LOL

  10. Thank you, thank you, thank you! My identical problem in Vista and Word was with SnagIt7 as an add-in for Word. Once I followed your instructions I was able to get the mouse working once again. I’m still having the same problem with closing Word, of course. I am contacting the SnagIt people to let them know since they have been so responsive. The independent program SnagIt works perfectly, and I can still capture screens in Word, so nothing lost, and a lot gained – my mouse and my sanity (at least part of it).

  11. I am having this same problem but I am WAAAYYY less avy than all of you…when your directions say ‘4. Rename this key.’ what should I remane it?

    Thanks

    A

  12. > 4. Rename this key.’ what should I remane it?

    The idea is to remove the key. Rename it to anything you like, say olddata. Alternatively you could delete it; people suggest renaming because it gives you an easy route back if something goes wrong.

    Tim

  13. I’ve been looking around at fixes online but I am using Vista…. I don’t have a ‘run’ option when I click the start menu. Any ideas?

    A

  14. On Vista just typing Regedit in the search box (bottom of Start menu) usually does it. Or press Windows key and R to bring up a Run box.

    Tim

  16. I’ve been having this problem for the past couple weeks and have been searching everywhere for a solution. Just tried the regedit trick that Bence mentioned and it seems to have worked.

    thanks for the info

  17. Bence – Thank you! You solved a problem that the Microsoft Partner help desk could not!

  18. thanks, the fixed worked after much frustration, but now my reference feature no longer works. I love that feature in 2007. Any idea on getting it back?

  19. This was absolutely my problem. Changed the load option in registry for OfficePrintAddIn and I’m mousing again! Only wish I would have found your blog 6 hours ago. Many thanks as it kept me from resorting to a complete reinstall. Now to find that FlashPaperWordUITemplate.2302.dot culprit and get rid of that annoying message.

  20. back again … Were you able to get the Word Options navigation beyond “Popular” to work? This is still in-op for me. Also, was unable to locate the flash template. Any ideas on location?

  21. Were you able to get the Word Options navigation beyond “Popular” to work? This is still in-op for me. Also, was unable to locate the flash template. Any ideas on location?

    Yes, all the Word Options now show up here.

    The template was in: c:Users[username]AppDataLocalMacromediaMacromedia FlashPaperOfficeTemplatesFlashPaperWordUITemplate.2302.dot

  22. Hi guys,
    read this thread with interest. I have deleted the flashpaper template etc etc, and yet when I start Word the template still shows up in the word add-ins area. How can this be? There are no related add-ins listed in the registry either. I also have another add-in namely RoboHook.wll, which I also deleted and yet this too still shows up in the add-ins area in the Word 2007 Ooptions dialog.
    Have you any idea as to why these two add-ins are still showing up even after I’ve deleted them andthey don’t show in the registry?
    thanks

  23. Thank you so much for posting this. I have been looking everywhere for the fix for this. It was the “Print to Laserfiche” plugin that was causing my problems.

  25. The reg fix took care of my Laserfiche problem – Thanks Much!! After 2 re-installs of Office and an attempted system restore point, I was beginning to think the only fix would be a complete reload!

    Incidentally, prior to finding this thread, I tried the MS fix mentioned in the previous post by Mark and it didn’t do anything to fix the issue.

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