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. just a quick THANK YOU!!!!

    I was going crazy, cause my mouse stopped working in Word 2007 (vista) the day before my final paper was due (and of course I left it till the last second)

    Anyways, I renamed the data file and all is well!!!

    Thanks!!!!!

  2. Another thanks to add to the list…no mouse in word 2007….what a nightmare….. but then your thread popped up on google and hey presto followed post #24 and nightmare over! BIG THANKS.

  3. Thanks, I have Power Designer 12 and it was the problem with my Word!!!
    Cheers!!!

  4. THANK YOU SO MUCH BENCE!
    I had this annoying problem for a week, but your trick worked!
    thanks a bunch!

  7. THIS WORKED!!! THANK YOU FOR POSTING IT!!

    It helped me:

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

  9. I too had the problem but changed the loadbehaviour value to 0 which fixed the problem. The addins were adobe.contribute.officeplugin & PDFmaker.plugin.

    Thanks a lot for your help.

  11. also followed Bence’s suggestion. perfect fix – thank you SO MUCH FOR POSTING THIS!!!

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

  12. also followed Bence’s suggestion.

    absolutely fantastic. saved me lots of stress.

  13. Thanks so much Tim,….Microsoft (Australia) “”SUPPORT”” was going to charge me $80 for that little piece of information, which is caused by their crap programming anyway. “Little” people like me are scared to do things in regedit incase the whole thing crashes. It’s good to get good advice and help.

    Maybe Bill Gates could consider sharing some of his billions with the users he rips off!!!

  14. Wow! That worked. I’ve had this trouble for a few months now, and nothing worked. Did what was described in #7 and I can highlight again.

    Thanks!

  19. Hey,

    Thanks for your advice on here. I copied the rename data 2 option and it worked perfectly for me.

    Thanks again!

  21. I installed office word 2007 but did not work. Every time I opened it, it ask to go to safe mode.

  22. Thank you!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
    I have no idea what I just did, but I followed the directions and it works!

  23. Thanks a lot guys.

    1) Changing load status to “0” for pluggins fixed the mouse problem.
    2) Changing data key to data2 fixed crash on exit.

  24. Did what bence said. Fixed perfectly on a Windows 7 box. Thanks so much for posting this 2 years ago lmao!!

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