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. I usually do not play around with Registry keys but did so following these step-by-step instructions. IT WORKED!! The annoying Word 07 problem is now gone… now I wait for the next MS-issue.

  2. La solución de renombrar la entrada del registro:
    HKEY_CURRENT_USERSoftwareMicrosoftOffice12.0WordData
    me ha funcionado, pero me parece una verguenza que los de microsoft no hayan publicado una actulización que lo haga. Me acabo de comprar el ordenador y he perdido todo el fin de semada en arreglar esta mierda.

  3. Same mouse problem on HP laptop running Vista SP1, though possibly not for all documents.

    The problem seemed to appear after a partially successful Windows Update. I got the “updates are ready to be installed” indicator and chose to view the updates. I noticed an optional (not checked) update for Synaptics PS/2 Touchpad that seemed appropriate for my laptop. I checked the box not thinking about the fact that this optional update would not have been downloaded to my system. I was offline, so the two suggested Windows updates succeeded to install but the Synaptics update failed. These events seemed too occur just before I noticed the Word 2007 problem. Restoring the Synaptics driver (from control panel) did not resolve the mouse issue in Word.

    The solution was, as above, to rename three items in the Data registry location specified above and re-start Word. (This seemed a quicker test than restarting and choosing to restore to a pre-update system state).

    Can’t be sure the update was involved, but posted here just in case others experience this sequence of events.

    THANKS!

  6. Hey I’m not sure if anyone has had this problem before but it is making me very frustrated. I have Vista and MS Office 2007 and whenever I get done writing anything or using Excell and I go to save it, if I click to save my document anywhere else like on a pin drive, my mouse will show the little loading icon and then about 5 seconds later a box will pop up and say Microsoft Office is not Responding. After about 1 minute it just closes out everything. I really need some help with this.

  7. Hello

    People of planet earth…

    I uninstalled Macromedia Flash paper after finding the uninstall icon in the program files for flash paper.

    all is back to normality.

    i am so happy

    its very difficult to hide my elation

    wooopie

    thank you all so very much indeed this was driving me absolutly potty……

  11. The error sucked, The fix for me was #7, do that, I just renamed it and its perfect now. Definitely some shitty programming.

  12. Installed write-n-cite by Refworks, these problems came up. After deinstalling that, Word still wasn’t acting nicely. So, started looking for fixes. Bence’s tip: rename the data key from the registry worked for me.

    Thanks a lot for putting this info up!

  13. Hello

    I was having the same problem and nothing was working.

    And run Windows Task Manager, my idea was to close application one by one maybe one of them cause problem, and And I have noticed 2x taskmgr.exe
    End process one of them and Word – mouse is working, everything fine!

  15. Unfortunately, I uninstalled and installed Office at least three times. It was only after I found this thread that I was able to make my crashing woes go away. I had the Endnote add-in problem, inability to navigate past the “Popular” option in “Word Options”, in ability to use the scroll bar, and crash on exit.

    Fixed the Endnote add-in problem by starting word in safe mode (winword /a), which gave me the ability to navigate to Add-ins so I could disable Endnote.

    Followed instructions posted by another user to delete the registry key – http://support.microsoft.com/kb/940791/en-us, which fixed all other problems.

  16. Great help!!!
    My problem was caused by SnagIt Addin.
    It was solved deleting HKEY_CURRENT_USERSoftwareMicrosoftOffice12.0WordData registry key.

    Thanks guys.!!

  17. Guys same problem

    I took sam kasle option and renamed
    HKEY_CURRENT_USERSoftwareMicrosoftOffice12.0WordData

    to Data2

    Thanks, this one was pissing me off

  18. Thanks so much for the helpful tips. I follow Bence trick and after many frustrated hours trying to solve my crashing word 2007 (under vista) it is now working just fine.

  19. Mark’s (#24) link to the Microsoft solution actually worked for me (happy days!). I believe I had a bad template in there somewhere “pdfm”? that Word kept wanting to save. Anyway, the Troubleshooter ran like a charm and now I can actually select text in Word and Outlook — hurray!!

  20. Thank you all!! Renaming the Data Key has solved this annoying problem. I had already started using Google Docs. I had searched Microsoft Support forums before and could not find this solution to such a common problem.

  21. Thanks for posting this, it has led me to almost fix a very similar problem.
    The symptoms were different – Word 2007 wouldn’t open files when double clicking and then crash when closed (would open them fine if opened from the ‘Open’ option).
    Initially options on the left of the ‘Word Options’ window didn’t respond. Edit registry for HD_LOCAL_MACHINE – Software – Microsoft – Word – Add-ins and set the `LoadBehaviour` key to 0 for each of the Add-ins.
    Removed FlashPaper add-in from the current user profile.
    Word now opens doc OK when double clicked, but crashes on exit. Can now access Word Options – manage add-ins and remove all – also set the ‘Disable all Application Add-ins’ in the Trust Centre bit. Word crashes after closing the Word Options window. FlashPaper template comes back next time Word is opened! It seems Word crashes when the template is removed and repairs itself next time it starts? Or possibly crashes before the template is actually removed. Also – how is it loading when the file is deleted?

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