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. Thank you Bence (#7) and Mark (#24). I actually followed the directions from Microsoft that Mark linked to…which are very similar to Bence’s directions. Worked like a charm!

    Of note, I just added SnagIt yesterday… which Dolores (#10) and many other posters mentioned.

    In any case…Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!

  2. I also overlooked HKEY_CURRENT_USER and was in the local machine one. It worked immediately after I renamed the data folder. Thanks GUYS!!!!!!!

  6. I can’t tell you how relieved I am to fix the problem. Thanks for the help, finally I can use word again. To think all I needed to do was rename a reg key. 🙂

    Matt

  7. thanks yo so very much kevin lee….i spent over an hour on the phone to a microsoft rep and they told me i was having to pay $75 for a technician to fix it with no gaurantee of it being rectified. The rep couldn’t even direct me to something on their very own web page. What a great service.

  8. I tried to change the value of addin. It worked but i could not close as i dont find sub menu data under 12.0/word. word still not closing. Plz. suggest a remedy.

  11. Wow. Completely driving me nuts. Wasted tons of productivity and hours trying to fix. I disabled FlashPaper to enable my mouse cursor and access to Word Options. I used Pence’s registry hack to eliminate FlashPaper from the AddIns and eliminate my word crashes.
    Thank you so much, Tim and Pence!

  12. Thanks so much – this has happened several times now, and I don’t use any add ons in Word, so it’s just Microsoft’s own buggy, crappy updates breaking it every time! If they think this will make me pay money for 7, they’re wrong.

  13. Thanks to Bence! I did it and it worked the first time. I renamed the file to OldData and exited regedit. All is well. Long live the free internet and free access to information!

  15. I was in Google looking up the Election results of Tuesday, and “emekongtrade.com/” website evidently redirected me to “exodus110.com/”, and I got this “Virus” warning, BUT I could not close my browser (Mozilla).

    It seems that is when Word stopped responding to my mouse.

    Also, it could have been my Windows Update on 11/04/09 of: Update for Internet Explorer 8 for Windows Vista for x64-based Systems (KB976749)

    Tim, I will follow your procedure, as your Word is now working.

    Thanks,
    Ed

  16. I was having the exact same problem only in my case, I resolved it not by removing an add-in but rather by enabling an add-in. Mind-Manager had been installed as an add-in but I had disabled it. When I re-enabled the add-in, the problem disappeared and the mouse cursor now works appropriately.

  18. HAD SAME PROBLEM WITH MOUSE IN WORD 2007 WINDOWS VISTA.

    Thank you so much for your suggestions, I uninstalled PDF creator (add-in, plug-in) and the mouse in word 2007 works again, the problem lasted 3 days. AT LAST MOUSE WORKS in WORD

  19. Works great!

    For anyone no particularly savvy on registry stuff, you’re renaming the thing that looks like a folder. So… rename “data” to “old data” or something like that.

    I got there and dug inside trying to figure out what to rename. 😉

  20. Thanks a million! I had the same nonresponsive mouse problem in Word 2007, and the regedit rename fix corrected it. M

  21. Dude, you’re the man. I uninstalled the Office Live Add in because it was the last thing I updated before this problem occurred. From all the responses you’ve gotten there could be a lot of things that could manifest this issue.

  22. I was excited to find this info because the exat same thing had just occured in my word 2007. Apon opening my computer to work on some documents, my computer notified me that it had restarted its self in the night to install some updates. Well I really didn’t aprove of my computer installing updates without asking me but I guess a computer has to do what a computer has to do. When I opened word I noticed that the scroll bar didn’t work and it was very annoying but I let it go.. Then I could select text with my mouse or click on any text. I tried the above sulution but it turned out to be too complicated for me. The good news is that my computer once again restarted its self with another update for word and everything works great now.

  23. @ Matt

    Thanks for the heads up Lenovo machines. It was driving me nuts trying to apply all the usual fixes. My situation is exactly as you described; Windows 7 64 bit, Word 2007, Client Security Solution active.

  24. http://support.microsoft.com/kb/940791

    The mouse does not work when you use Word.
    You cannot open a Word document from the Search window in Windows Vista.
    You cannot open a Word document from Windows Desktop Search.
    Word crashes when you try to start or exit Word.
    Word crashes when you open the Open dialog box.
    Word crashes when you save a document.
    Word crashes when you close a document.

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