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. You are a LIFE SAVER!!!! I have been working on this for days. I have scanned for viruses, repaired office, reloaded office, I entered every help section on Microsoft, I downloaded every update… and then gave up and searched my problem on Google and this appeared. I can’t believe you figured this out!!! THANK YOU THANK YOU It was driving me nuts because I couldn’t format or move with my mouse in the text… Thank you!!!!

    And for those who don’t understand how to do this, here are the steps in easy terms.

    1. Under program search, press run
    2. Double click run
    3. Type Regedit
    Then there is a tree and each of those items above are branches
    So first you double click HKEY_Current User
    Then click software
    then click microsoft
    then click office
    then click 12.0
    then click word (I think, I am doing this from my notes)
    then click data
    You can delete the file and it will reappear when you start word again and it will be corrected. Or you can rename it and it does the same thing.

    On that blog, they also said you can change the load behavior for add ins and that might help and that is in the regedit too. It is hkey_local_machine
    then click software
    then click microsoft
    then click office
    then click word
    then click addins
    then click loadbehavior
    and change the value to 3 for each add-in

    Mine was at 3 so I changed it to 0, but when I restarted word, it put it back at 3. I think I had the other problem. In any case, it is now fixed…

  3. Thanks for this, sorted out my problems by going into the reg and changing the load key to 0 for adobe pdf plugin and adobe contribute

    And now it works fine

    Maybe Adobe should be made aware of the problem?

  4. The below post from Sam TOTALLY FIXED THE PROBLEM of the MOUSE THING! Thanks a ton Sam!

    (FYI – “Rename the key” Means, right click on the folder “Data” and then click on “Rename.” I used “OldData.” When word fired back up, it initially had an error message and then worked fine.

    Sam, you’re a rock star!

    sam kasle says:
    May 22nd, 2007 at 3:48 pm

    Note #7 solved the problem for me, I just renamed the ‘data’ folder ‘ data2.’ Everything seems to be working just fine now. Here are the instructions from Bence Arendas, #7:
    Close Word and Outlook
    2. Start / Run and type regedit
    3. Navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USERSoftwareMicrosoftOffice12.0WordData
    4. Rename this key.
    5. Restart Word

  7. The original post solved my issues, it was identical problem except caused by Contribute CS3

    This seemed to happen when I installed IE8 RC1 Beta. Which as I remember did prompt me about some Contribute plugin.

  8. Update: My machine did an automatic update this morning, and the mouse problem cropped up for me. the solution offered here is still effective. Thanks so much to everyone!

  10. I have a persistent Word 2007 crash whose message comes up as follows. Perhaps someone can guide me to a solution? I cannot even find “StackHash” on the Web …

    Problem signature:
    Problem Event Name: APPCRASH
    Application Name: WINWORD.EXE
    Application Version: 12.0.6331.5000
    Application Timestamp: 48fa27b4
    Fault Module Name: StackHash_7489
    Fault Module Version: 6.0.6001.18000
    Fault Module Timestamp: 4791a7a6
    Exception Code: c0000374
    Exception Offset: 000b015d
    OS Version: 6.0.6001.2.1.0.256.6
    Locale ID: 1033
    Additional Information 1: 7489
    Additional Information 2: 627f2e60ed206ed43e5dbafe8610b9d1
    Additional Information 3: 694b
    Additional Information 4: 1c36cf2080930d8b7353695fe9d3c49a

  11. Thank you Tim & all thew others.
    This problem with word was driving me insane also.

    Adobe contribution was the problem for me.
    when I deleted the reg key, everything is working fine.

    Thank you once again guys.

  12. YES! I have an essay due tomorow and my word kept crapping out on me. Thanks to you and posted of comment #7 (that post was my issue rather than any addins)

    Thanks guys 😀

  13. I cannot tell you how incredibly helpful this was for me. I’m on a deadline at work & couldn’t highlight & Word kept crashing. All better now 🙂 Can’t thank you all enough!!

  14. thank you so much! my word would not show the mouse, i couldn’t left click or select text but after taking the advice in steps 7 and 12 the problem was regulated.
    thank you very much!

  16. Regarding annoying word problem, “can’t select”, “can’t scroll”, same problem. Tried repairing office, did nothing to fix problem. Finally, right clicked in bottom of Word Window, in the status bar, and a list of options popped up, and there was a check mark next Selection Mode. I took the check mark off, and everything is working properly again. Hope this helps folks. Terri

  17. Thanks Tim! I was lucky enough to find this after 10 minutes of dealing with the problem. Also thanks to Vivian and Arendas for fixing the crash problem.

    Now I can write my paper that is due in 8 hours 10 hours 🙂

  22. Good on you guys! Thanks for the assist – 3 days of going nuts!!!! You saved the day – shame afet all this time MS cant sort it out! Lost productivity on this is massive!

    Thanks again ppl – power to the community!
    Cheers
    Adam

  24. Thank you so much Bence!!!!! This was really pissing me off, and your fix worked like a charm!! Yay #7!!! I don’t have Snagit, so I guess I’ll never know what was wrong…

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