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 tried every suggestion to correct problems with words running in Vista home edition to no avail (manipulated the registry and folders). Word starts in 7 minutes or more and then is unstable. I can’t find normal.dotm anywhere. Word works fine under windows XP so far…
    All other Office 2007 components work fine. I think I’ll un-install office 2007 and go back to office 2003 which I didn’t have any problems with it.

  2. Hi, I’m running MS Office 2007 on Vista (32-bit), and whenever I open MS Word, the mouse icon pointer keeps switching between pointer, the typing symbol and the blue circle (that it shows when its busy with something).

    any suggestions?

    Thanks in advance, p.s. I went through the #24 link steps to see if it would help, but no luck….

  3. Try starting word in safe mode, as described in my original post.

    If it works OK, then you know it is some add-on that’s causing the problem.

    Tim

  4. Hi Tim,

    I tried it in safemode, but I’m still having the same problem. I also uninstalled MS office 07 and reinstalled it, but same problem…

  5. Tim and Bence,
    I’m not religious man but bless both of you. JC, after researching this for a week I almost threw my laptop out the window. Thanks to all the posters. My issue was a combination of SnagIt 8 which I’m running with Vista Ultimate, Office 2007, AND the Data key issue. Between the two issues it appears to have resolved all of my issues as well. Thank you, Thank you, Thank you. My Dragon Naturally speaking now also works as well as it did before this corruption occured.

  6. Bless your hearts! You saved me from committing suicide. I have a presentation due tomorrow and I was going nuts trying to figure out what happened to my Word. Turns out it was the SnagIt addin.

  7. I had the unusable mouse problem in Word 2007 on Windows XP Pro. Thanks to all the above posters – I tracked it down to the HKLMSOFTWAREMicrosoftOfficeWordAddinsLFOffice11.SaveToLF registry key. I changed the LoadBehavior Value to 0 and Word2007 now works fine. To test it, I set it back to 3 and the issue came back.

    It seems that the LaserFiche addin for Office11(2003) doesn’t play nice with Office12(2007).

  8. Hi Cursed people,

    I just checked on the page again after a long time, and I am happy to see that we brought back so many people to life. My original issue started with an upgraded version of Office 2007 from a beta and having the Snagit addin 🙂

  9. Thank you all so much. First to Tim for the detailed yet easy to follow directions, and also to all the others that have put their solutions up too. I had a mix of problems, but all the solutions were found here. Again thanks alot, I can finally work on my term papers again! Yahoo.

  11. Thank you – removing FlashPaper and editing the reg file worked as a quick fix! – I have office 07 and Vista – it fixed:
    crashing when exiting word
    no word options
    no able to select text or images

    Once again – Thank you!

  12. I am a total novice when it comes to working with word, the solution Bence suggested solved my Vista Word 2007 problems, such as stalling and not being able to save documents after making changes,Now everything works great again. Why does’nt MS have an update to fix this? I am glad I Googled for a solution. Thank you you saved my senior Thesis and my life. Bill

  13. I tried what you suggested long before I found your blog (just to make it clear that I’m not blaming you!); unfortunately, it didn’t solve my Word issues (which eventually extended to the rest of Office) and now my entire OS is corrupted after following the “solutions” of Dell and Microsoft Tech Support personnel.
    My question is this: I use Word a lot to take notes in law school, and have an extensive collection of autocorrect options. Before I have to do a full OS reinstall, is there any way I can salvage my AutoCorrect Options through Knoppix?

  14. Did everything (including MS document) – with no success.
    I have word 2007 + server 2003. At startup word works fine. But when word looses focus (e.g. to copy sth. from excel), mouse won’t work any more… Any (new) suggestions?

  15. Found the solution: it was the PowerDesigner 12.5 plugin – but it was not listed in the word 2007 registry.

  16. I am using Laserfiche and Word 2007 on a Dell laptop running Windows XP. I do not have administrator priveleges. Suddenly my mouse quit functioning in the Word 2007 document screen, on the scrool bar, or anywhere in the Word Options screens. Additionally, I could not double click a Word document to open it–this opened word, but not the document. I had to open Word, and then open the document.

    When my administrator logged in, there was no problem.

    I used Tim’s instructions to set the Laserfiche add-in from 3 to 0. My system works fine now–no crashes, no problems with mouse.

    I have contacted Laserfiche and they are working on a solution.

  17. I had Word 2007 and Snag-it. I just could not get the template Snagit Add-in to delete. Everytime I deleted it, Word Crashed. Finally Bence had the solution to delete the [HKEY_CURRENT_USERSoftwareMicrosoftOffice12.0WordData] key. And, voila, Word no longer crashes. The Add-in.dot file is gone.

    My recommendation is not to do any add-ins in the word program. I have tried Snag-it and it doesn’t work. Further, Nuance’s Paperport and PDF Converter is poor. I am ale to get Adobe Professional Acrobat to work perfectly as a addin for word. Just make sure you get the latest version, otherwise, you will have errors.

  18. Wow, this site is awesome. Thanks.

    I used the following the method to fix the problem.

    Uninstall Macromedia Flash Paper via the provided uninstaller on the
    machine.

    Deleted flash paper templates located at
    c:Users[username]AppDataLocalMacromediaMacromedia
    FlashPaperOfficeTemplatesFlashPaperWordUITemplate.2302.dot

    Deleted the data file located in the registry at;
    HKEY_CURRENT_USERSoftwareMicrosoftOffice12.0WordData

  19. For those of many who use the Laserfiche product and run in to this problem…
    I have found that if you delete the “send to laserfiche.dot” and “normal.dot” that MS Word will reset and resolve the issue.
    Additional note. For whatever reason, in a windows domain environment (mainly with roaming profiles), if you migrate the user profiles to a different location on the network…MS Word will get “corrupted” again and not load properly. Delete the .dot files, word reset, all is good to go. Good luck! I have found many posted that date back over this year of people contacting LF about this and they are “working on it”.

  20. I had a problem with word 2007, can’t select text, and navigate cursor by mouse in document after minimalize any window, mouse working good in menu but not in document…
    solution:
    HKEY_CURRENT_USERSoftwareMicrosoftOfficeWordAddinsWordToRQM12.Connect
    key: LoadBehavior and change value from 3 to 0 and it nworks correct

  21. Hi Tim and commenters, I was wondering as I have a similar problem that I can’t find a solution for, if you would think maybe it’s the same kind of thing.

    Last week I discovered that on most web pages my mouse doesn’t have the usual pointer but the grabbing hand one instead and when I want to scroll move the mouse about the page, it doesn’t really do that, instead it will grab the page and move it. I would like to be able to highlight work that I’ve done to save it, put it on different blogs etc, but I can’t do that with the mouse.

    I’m not aware of having downloaded anything new and have run virus checks, so I am puzzled and slightly frustrated by this. It’s a new comp (October), pre-installed with Vista, and I am not using a wireless mouse. The problem persists whether I use one of two mice or a pen, so it’s obviously something else – I’m just not as technically minded as some of you! Any help would be most appreciated.

  22. @Lizzie

    I don’t know. But here are a couple of random suggestions.

    Presuming you are using Internet Explorer, you can reset its settings to default. Tools – Internet Options – Advanced – Restore Advanced Settings and Reset.

    Another idea is to use System Restore to revert to a time just before it started going wrong. Press Windows Key + R, type rstrui.exe, follow the prompts. Use the most recent time that you are sure is before it went wrong.

    A third idea is to try logging on as a different user. Create a new user if need be. If it works OK in the different profile, the problem is somewhere in your options.

    Of course it would be better to know exactly what the issue is and how to fix it…

    Tim

  23. Thanks Tim. I have tried three times to do a system restore (I meant to say earlier, but with a houseful of kids off school and excited about the holidays I got distracted and forgot) but each time it has gone through the motions and then said no files have been changed, so it looks like I need to try one or both of the other options to fix this. I’ll let you know when I do try it – might not be yet as I am not on my pute (it’s in a different household) – hopefully to say thanks *crosses fingers*

    Thanks and Seasons Greetings :o)

  24. Thanks for this! Word is not crashing on exit anymore. Now, if I could just get it to not keep “installing” itself everytime I run it would be great.

    Happy Holidays,
    Jose
    Boston

  25. Can’t really believe that even after release of SP for office 2007, this was still the only solution that saved me from formatting my computer. Thanks!

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