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. That one worked! So am I to understand that I have to run safemode every time now? Sorry I am not that technically proficient.

    Your assistance and site have been so much appreciated!!! Thank you!

  2. OK I just solved my problem…
    per many visits to microsoft site found this fix for WORD:
    go to Words: TOOLS/MACRO/SECURITY/TRUSTED PUBLISHERS/
    delete any, and uncheck Trust All Installed Add Ins
    You will annoyingly be prompted to enable or disable macros for each add in every time you open Word but hey it works.

    Thanks again!

  3. So am I to understand that I have to run safemode every time now?

    No, it is just diagnosis. It proves that it must be an add-in of some kind that is causing the problem.

    The next step is to work out which one is the culprit. You could try adding them back one by one.

    Tim

  4. Thank you Tim!! I was kicking the furniture before I found your solution. Only 90 minutes of computer rage in the end.

  5. Just wanted to say thanks for this regedit tip. Renaming the data key fixed a problem I had just begun experiencing. I could not update a table of contents in Word 2007 or insert a new table of contents. I had tried repairing and re-installing, but nothing worked. I was almost ready to ditch Vista entirely because Word 2007 seems to run much more smoothly XP. Thanks again so much!

  6. Thank you for the info, however, anyone know how to remedy this same problem when using Office for Mac? Regedit doesn’t exist…

  7. I have an identical problem with Outlook 2007 (12.0.6212.1000 SP1 12.0.6213.1000). The only plug-in I have is the one for Outlook from SalesForce.com

    I’ll post again if removing it seems to fix the issue.

  9. @Luke,

    This problem isn’t universal; it seems to be to do with a corruption of the add-in data. Hence deleting the data key as above might fix the problem without removing the add-in.

    Tim

  10. Tim,

    I looked at a bunch of different solutions to this issue with Word and the one you provided worked the best by far. It was elegant, easy to follow and worked perfectly. Great site and excellent resource. Keep up the great work.

  11. I likewise found the Word Data Key regedit fix to work, BUT, every time Microsoft updates Vista, the same problem occurs (no text selection with the mouse in MS Word) and requires the same regedit fix again.

    I haven’t seen this mentioned. Has it happened to anyone else?

  12. Thank you Tim for initiating this forum, and thank you Bence for the quick fix suggestion. Works great!

  13. Bence – you are great! I used the combination of removing the Snag-it addin and deleting the Word Data registry and my troubles are over. Thank you!!

  15. Bottom line: After you disable the SnagIt add-in, you might try re-enabling it. Or not … I use SnagIt all the time but have never used the Word add-in.

    I’ll join in the general applause for you, Tim! My experience also has a couple of points I haven’t seen mentioned in the replies so far:

    1) The problem happened immediately after installing Photoshop Elements. Maybe a coincidence, as I don’t see that any Word add-in was installed.

    2) After changing the SnagItOfficeAddin.Connect LoadBehavior to 0, the only thing I did was unselect “SnagIt Add-in.dot” from the Global Templates and Add-ins list in Word Options – Add-ins – Manage Word Add-ins menu. Now everything worked — no crash on close, and mouse selection works.

    3) The surprise was that when I changed the registry value back to 3, everything still worked and the SnagIt add-in is running as well.

  17. A million thanks to you smart people who had the solution–wasn’t available on Microsoft help anywhere!

  19. I’m using Word on XP, and AFAIK, the only add-ins loaded have to do with WebEx and something called RCS. I tried to find the registry entry cited early on: (HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWAREMicrosoftOfficeWordAddins) but that doesn’t exist on my system.

    But I did find (HKEY_CURRENT_USERSoftwareMicrosoftOffice12.0WordData) and I renamed its Settings entry to Settings.renamed. Once I did that, I could then save files/close Word without getting crashes.

    But when I went back into the registry, a *new* Settings entry had been created, and as best I can tell (it’s long, and it’s binary) it contains the same data as the old Settings settings. WTH? And yet I can still save files without the crash.

    I guess I’ll plod along until it starts crashing again, and then go to Plan B. Anybody got a Plan B?

  20. Excellent post. Solve lots of problems. Those who have trouble with Snag-It should try 5-clicks. Trouble-free and very, very handy. Not an Add-in. I don’t work for either, just like what I’ve seen and used.

  21. Bence – Thank you, Thank You, thank You – you are a life saver – this was driving me nuts and you have saved the day!!

  23. Ah yes…as was the case for Snoop Dawg…an upgrade to Adobe Acrobat 8.0 caused it for me too.

    Comment #24 left by Marc perfectly solved the problem.

    So glad I found this page!!

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