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 just talk a friend through Bence’s fix over IM. She had never been in the registry before & my husband was sitting behind me saying, what you’re doing is scary. But it went smoothly and worked. Yey!! Everyone is very happy. Thanks so much!!

  2. OMG Thank you for posting this! I had the same issue as everyone else… Microsoft update and no mouse ability.

    For me, I just searched for the FlashPaper and Uninstalled it and VOILA! Instant gratification!

    Thank you again!!!

  3. Thank you so much for your advice on renaming the key: HKEY_CURRENT_USERSoftwareMicrosoftOffice12.0WordData .
    I was so unbelievably frustrated! Thanks again for posting this, you have really helped me out, I have a few important assignments to finish!
    All the best!!

  4. I have to say I ran into this problem a second time (one year later), and for the second time I found this post.

    Took me a few minutes to find my bearings (and then I noticed that the RegEdit still opened to the right entries!), but once I did what Bence suggested again — success!

    Thanks all.

    Ray

  5. Thanks, folks! I absolutely DEPEND on forums like this one to deal with my MS challenges as they come up (and they do come up, again and again!)

    Just wanted to say that my scroll issue was resolved by following the good advice and recommendations given by you folk, and I just want you to know how grateful I am that you post this kind of stuff!

    Have a lovely day!
    Britt

  6. Thanks! 🙂 worked perfectly. I tried to reinstall office 3 times, until found this post… 🙂

    Have a great day, everyone!

  8. OMFG THANK YOU. IVE BEEN HAVING THIS PROBLEM FOR THE PAST FREAKING WEEK AND IT WAS SO ANNOYING-ESPECIALLY WEN I HAD TO WRITE A WHOLE ESSAY. THANK YOU THIS MADE MY DAY. yea this is awesome.

  10. Bence Arendas’ solution worked for me immediately. THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR THAT ADVICE!

    I pasted it here, so nobody has to look for it.

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

  11. THANKS SO MUCK BEEN TRYING TO FIX THIS FOR AGES TRIED EVERYTHING THANK YOU SO MUCH

  13. Thank you so much!!! I have had the same issue and tried everything! Renaming the Data to Old Data worked!!!!!

    Thank you, Thank you Thank you!

  14. Good to see this is working well for so many people, but it hasn’t for me. I’m on Win7 RC1 and was able to disable the addins via regedit, but I’m still experiencing the crash upon closing.

    What do you do if you don’t have anything called “Data” in “HKEY_CURRENT_USERSoftwareMicrosoftOffice12.0Word” ?? Thats my issue.

  15. Nevermind my last post. I overlooked the HKEY_CURRENT_USER part and was still in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE. Whoops! Now my problem is solved like the rest of you guys.

  16. you guys f@@king rock! this is the 2nd time the updates didi this! It happens everytime i try to write my novel! Maybe god is telling me something! hehehe…..

    Thanks for the advice, had it fixed in 3 seconds flat.

  17. Hi

    I found this page when trying to track down a solution to a problem I’m having with Word7. I have it on two computers – one has XP, one has Vista. On the XP computer Word runs fine, but on Vista it will crash when I try to use the equations function on the insert tab. It opens the equations options but won’t actually show any of the functions and freezes up, so the programme has to be closed down. I have tried the solutions posted here for the other problems with word but they haven’t fixed my problem. Just wondered if anyone knows a solution to this? Hope I am not out of order asking this question on here and breaking any ‘site’ protocol!

    Thanks, Jo
    PS/ I am not a very savvy computer person, so pidgin computerspeak would be appreciated.

  18. @Jo

    Unfortunately what you report doesn’t give enough information to identify the problem. Here’s general advice:

    Try the latest service pack if not already installed:

    http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=B444BF18-79EA-46C6-8A81-9DB49B4AB6E5&displaylang=en

    Try a repair install. Control Panel – Programs – Uninstall – select Microsoft Office – click Change – select Repair – click Continue.

    If that fails, you could still try uninstall – reinstall but I doubt it will work.

    Tim

  20. Hi Tim

    Thanks for getting back to me so quickly. Well, I’ve done what you suggested and it does work now!….. Feel a bit of a twit now, like one of those time wasting folk that dial 999 because they can’t get the top off their cough mixture bottle. Thanks for taking the time to reply.

    Jo

  21. @Jo that’s good to know, thanks for reporting back.

    The truth is that most of us have little chance of working out exactly what is wrong when these problems occur, hence the brute-force fixes.

    Tim

  22. Hey, was wondering, if this happened on my Word, which I got because my Computer teacher installed them for me, and she used the same installer. So heres the thing: Will this happen to her?
    If it does all Computers at school will get this and i might just be the only one to solve it.(Hope so)
    In other words, (LOL, words, jaja) IT WAORKED THE THING OF REMOVING DATA

  23. Wow! 2 years later this MS Word problem still persists!!!! What would I do without you?!?!? Thanks so much #7/Bence for providing the answer!!! You rock!!!!

    Just to give you additional info, this problem also prevented my ability to open MS Word 07 docs from Windows Explorer! It wasn’t just about the mouse/scroll/highlight not working in Word…but even prevented accessing docs through the file mgmt system!!!

    Anyway…Thanks a bunch!!!!!

  24. A simplier solution is to remove the add in Word Safe Mode.
    If you have just installed an AddIn or the vendor of a software product installed an update with an AddIn this may be your problem.

    In my situation:

    It looks like Snagit (a screen capture program) sent out an update recently. I installed the update and Word would not allow the mouse to copy or paste text.

    The problem was that Snagit automatically installed it’s Word Add In. (I had fixed this problem when I originally installed Snagit)

    To fix this problem go into Word safe mode: Run > winword /safe (space after winword but not after forward slash) and when Word launches go to Window icon at the top left, select Word Options at the rectange button at the Bottom, select Add In and then remove the Add In’s.

  25. Had same office 2007 mouse issue. Did not have the Flash Paper add in. found that Adobe contibute add in caused the problem. Once removed all good. hope this helps someone.
    Cheers
    Wayne

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