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. Hi Tim. Finally gotten home and tried your suggestions. Changing IE settings didn’t help so I tried doing a system retore and was again told nothing had been changed. I set up another account and the mouse appeared to work fine in that one so it looks as though you were right about my settings. I’d already looked at those before, but obviously I am missing something! I’ll have another look-see.
    Thanks

  2. Excellent discussion and solution! I had the Laserfiche issue and didn’t recognize it until I had searched all over creation. Could have saved a lot of cyber rage if I would have found this thread a long time ago. Incidentally, Laserfiche help is no help on this issue.

  3. Brilliant blog entry — thank you. I was able to resolve this problem even though I am far from an expert on such things. For me, the name of the relevant template that I had to remove was slightly different:
    FlashPaperWordUITemplate.2283.dot

  4. I will join the chorus of praise for Tim Anderson and the other posters on this fabulous site – I am actually running Word97 in Vista (no apologies, can’t stand these ‘improved’ versions), and after two months, it suddenly became difficult to select text. The problem appear to have been solved by changing LoadBehavior from 3 to 0 as described above. Until the next problem, folks!
    IF

  5. I’ve had the exact same problem. I could not select text in a word doc.

    My cure was to navigate to:

    HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWAREWow6432NodeMicrosoftOfficeWordAddins

    In there I changed the value of the LoadBehavior key from 3 to 0 for each add-in.

    This was a similar fix to Tim’s first post at the top of this list but I had to change it slightly as I’m running Vista Business 64 bit and office 07….

  7. Like many, I had this problem but luckily I was able to restore my system to a point just before the last Microsoft update was installed.

    In my case the problem can be traced to the Windows update installation restarting my computer when I was not in attendance and when I had left several apps running, including Word 2007 (running on Vista). Does this ring a bell with those affected?

    My restored image already had the update in it waiting to be installed (my LAN had been disconnected continuously during the Ghost restoration and up until the restart message appeared again). This time, after checking that Word worked as expected, I closed all apps then let the update installation restart proceed. Word worked perfectly after this was complete so I deduce that the automatic restart when Word was running may have been the cause of the problem. Obviously, Tim’s solution is the way to go for those without backup, or even with backup, but I had a hunch that the restart with Word still running was the problem and wanted to see if I was right!

  10. This entry of Tim’s blog was a real helper when my version of Word started to behave uncontrolled. My issue was caused by Technsmit Snagit (my version 8.2.3), as it was for Delores. As i can work again, but still have crashes when closing Word, this issue will receive follow-up on my blog, and hope that the Technsmit people will come up with a solution real fast…

    Anyway, thanks a lot for this post – it saved me a lot of time!

  11. Thanks to poster # 82!!!!!

    I tried deleting the data key, and like five other things here….but # 82 (Thundr) was the one thing that fixed my issue. Laserfiche add in was the problem!!!!!

  12. I’ve got the issue on my laptop…curcer is delayed/pauses in Word 2007/Vista..also INS does not work.
    Tried to delete the Data Key..but it keeps re-appearing.
    Have 2 add ins….Loadbehavior on both are like 0x0000(8)..no “3” tried changing the (8) to 0..nothing…
    Cannot find snagit etc…
    THis is driving me crazy…..Word worked fine for a month then suddenly this happened.

  13. Thanks, Tim!
    Changing the LoadBehavior on the plugins to “0” worked for me.

    My problem showed up about the same time as a new kitten who liked to chase the cursor, and I was afraid he’d hit some odd combination of keys to cause the problem.

  14. Thanks for figuring this one out. This makes twice in one day that I’ve been able to find a (for me) very technical solution that’s been bugging me for a LONG TIME, at this blog…which I will now bookmark.

  15. Many thanks for the solution. I deleted an Adobe PDF maker key in registry and it fixed the problem instantly…did not even have to close Word or reboot.

  17. Thanks a lot! I was just about to re-install office 2007 when I stumbled upon this blog.
    It’s been a year since the first entry here and you’d think this problem should be solved by now.

  18. Thank you guys so much! This has also been driving me crazy. I don’t believe mine was related to an add-in. At least I am not aware of installing any add-ins disabling them did not help. What DID help was renaming/deleting the registry entry Bence in response #7 about HKEY_CURRENT_USERSoftwareMicrosoftOffice12.0WordData.

    This did the trick for me. Thank you so much!!!

    CARTER

  19. I myself have had too many problems with FlashPaper and Word 2007. I have spent hours trying to fix it.

  20. Bence… you’re a life saver…. thanks for posting!!! It solved my problem and now my wife is happy again 🙂

  21. Hi Sam,
    Thank you and everyone else in this thread, as this solution worked for me too. I’ve been hitting my head up against the wall (2nd time this has happened!) and couldn’t figure out why I couldn’t select text, etc. I re-installed, too, but the only fix is to rename the folder as you stated.

  23. Holy Crap! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!!! Bence’s solution worked like gangbusters. This post saved the day after days of frustration!

  24. I too can no longer use the scroll or text selection options in Word only. None of the suggested fixes seem to be working. I have Word 2003, with Office 11.0 not 12.0. Would that affect why deleting the Data is not working? I deleted/uninstalled Macromedia. I deleted all updates back 3 months to no avail. Any suggestions? Help.

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