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”

  3. A possibly related problem is driving me crazy. I’m running Word 2003 under Vista. Whenever I close the last instance of Word (either Word itself or Outlook, which is using Word as its e-mail editor) a WINWRD.EXE process immediately takes over about 50% of my CPU. I can fix this in Task Manager by ending the rogue process, but it would be great to find the root cause. Thanks.

  5. Thanks so much Bence, I have no idea why my plugin stopped working suddenly but. Now word is closing and I am able to select text again. the culprit program was abbyy pdf transformer. Once uninstalled no problem.

  6. ref: Mouse does not respond properly in Word 2007

    A combination of the inputs worked for me –

    Part 1 – got my mouse working
    HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWAREMicrosoftOfficeWordAddins

    Found three add-ins listed. I changed the value of the LoadBehavior key from 3 to 0 for each add-in.

    Part 2 – stopped word from crashing on exit
    . 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. Thanks to all of you. My mouse stopped working in Word for no reason – nothing new installed. All the steps in #7 worked for me. I renamed the folder Data2 instead of deleting it.
    I also had the same problem as #47 – double clicking a document opened Word, but not the document, although then File/Open worked okay. Now I can use the mouse AND double-click a document to open it.

  8. Thanks you sooooooo much. Couldn’t select the word options or use the mouse on documents and word crashed on close all the time. Registry key and removing the flashpaper add in and template cured all. Tim you’re up front description was great.

    Thanks again all.

  9. LaserFiche strikes again, had to start word in safe mode, remove the cursed add in, and all is good.

  10. have had a serious problem like most users. i have been using microsoft office 2007 for over 2 weeks everthing had been working great. then suddently the mouse started freezing and stalling, cannot highlight, and scroll down on word or outlook note page.

    i have tried all solutions posted on most websites. cant find an answer to my problem till now. please advise me if you have had a similar problem and have manage to solve it.

  14. removing the FlashPaperWordUITemplate.2302 did not resolve the crashing problem.

    After playing with all option for 6 hours, the startegy that resolved all problems was:

    Disable the file – OfficePrintAddIn which is listed in the registry under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWAREMicrosoftOfficeWordAddins

    Dont change your DATA or OPTION registry.
    Word came back to full life – and I went to sleep….

  15. Hi,

    the exact same problem here. Manifested this morning with no apparent reason. Tried Bence’s advice on comment #7, and all is peachy now.

    A million thank yous!

  19. Hi! Thanks for this it helped alot. But instead of the file you mention caused your problem the same problem happend to me but was caused by a different addin.

    The file that casued my problems was named Adobe.Contribute.OfficePlugin

    I followed these steps:
    A combination of the inputs worked for me –

    Part 1 – got my mouse working
    HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWAREMicrosoftOfficeWordAddins

    Found three add-ins listed. I changed the value of the LoadBehavior key from 3 to 0 for each add-in.

    Part 2 – stopped word from crashing on exit
    . Close Word and Outlook
    2. Start / Run and type regedit
    3. Navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USERSoftwareMicrosoftOffice12.0WordData
    4. Rename this key. (The files in my case that I had to rename was Settings and Toolbars)
    5. Restart Word

    This worked like a charm!

  21. Just wanted to add Thanks!!! Same problem with word 2007 – was driving me insane. All soretd now after renaming the data key.

  22. THANKS! I had the same issue (mouse not working in documents and Word crashing on closing). The fix was to disable the add-in associated with Adobe Contribute Plugin. Word now appears to work OK.

  23. I just wanted to say thanks as well to those who put the effort to help everyone else suffering with the moodiness of MS Office. Tim’s article helped me start Word (2007 on Vista) normally (it was not opening files except from within word not by double clicking a file, and then text would not be selectable) and Bence’s contributon helped deal with the application crashing upon closing it. So thanks again. You saved me (and many others) loads of work and stress.

  25. Must be something in the air… (or the updates) I ran into this same issue this week. We write addins for Word and have been testing one so I was not surprised when it broke. What surprised me was that I could not fix it. I removed all of the addins and still CRASH. I finally determined that one of the addins had been saved with changes to the Print, Save, and Open commands on the MENU toolbar in word 2003. If I opened Word using the /a switch (without addins or settings), I was ok. I tried Detect & Repair and finally gave up and deleted my [HKEY_CURRENT_USERSoftwareMicrosoftOffice12.0WordData] key. This solved the problem (it was actually the Settings entry that was corrupt) and I was able to put my addins back into startup – once the offending addin was fixed of course!

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