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”

  2. Thank you!!! I don’t know why this bug chose to bite me today, but I never would have figured it out without these posts. I unloaded add-ins via the registry, and still had to use winword /a to get a usable instance. You are heros.

  4. Did all of the above; the issue of selecting text in Word and selecting Word options was fixed, but Word still crashed upon exit.

    I removed Contribute. Word still crashed on exit. Looked at list of loaded templates in Word under Word Options, and the Flash Paper file was still listed, even after I deleted it and removed Contribute.

    So I had to do the following fix to make Word forget it had ever seen the Flash Paper template:

    delete the following Registry subkey:

    HKCUSoftwareMicrosoftOffice12.0WordData

    Found this fix at http://www.edbott.com/weblog/?p=1771

  5. Hey Tim, thanks a million for this blog! And also thanks to Bence Arendas (#7) for his solution- that solved the very annoying/puzzling problem!!
    =D

  6. Truly thanks another million to Tim for the blog Bence (#7). This worked for me too – renamed to “OldData”. 2 comments :
    1)For OpenSource problems I know I’m on my own so jump into forums and quickly find a fix. With Windows, Microsoft has so many tools I get lulled into thinking their diagnostics are the solution and stupidly follow their recommendations without thinking for myself. Silly me!
    2)I’m amazed a problem like this remains after 18 months. Must be because Bill retired.

  7. I went to
    HKEY_CURRENT_USERSoftwareMicrosoftOffice12.0WordData
    and renamed settings key to settings2. Then went opened word, and found that it worked, so i went back to my registry and it created another key called settings, so i deleted settings2, and everything worked fine. It must just need to recreate the key.

  8. Hi,

    Thanks!. I had the same problems and followed your steps to deactivate the add-ins. Snag-it 8 was the culprit on my Word 2007/Vista machine where it would not scroll or close properly and i could not access word options.

  9. My selection not working issue was actually quite different. Well, the problemn was the same but the cause was not an addin, nor word at all. I use synergy for controlling all my computers from a single KB/Mouse. whenever I run synergy as admin on the host computer Word will not select anymore!

  10. hrm i guess i should have read ALL the posts, another person posted regarding it. The solution is not to not run it with word, but to make sure it runs at the same user context and priviledges as word. So if you run synergy as admin, run word as admin too and it will work fine. If you run synergy as regular user, word works fine as regular user.

  11. THANK YOU SO MUCH Bence Arendas!!!! THAT WAS SO EASY. I WOULD NEVER FIX IT MYSELF WITHOUT YOUR HELP.

  12. I just wasted about 6 hours trying to rollback, reinstall, restore, uninstall, running Norton Anti-Virus…..all completely unsuccessful in fixing the mouse issue in Word. Why did it take me so long to Google this problem? Bence’s solution was practically instantaneous. Thank you!

    PS. I generally NEVER post to these boards, but in this case my relief is so great I just had to.

  13. Thank goodness there are tech savvy people out there willing to share their experiences. I too was going mad with the Vista/Word not able to select text problem. I resorted to using notepad to type up my doc cause I couldn’t deal with it. After being away from the computer for a few hours finally thought to Google it. Bingo here is my solution. I installed the flash component a few days ago .. so i uninstalled it as it wasn’t working anyway and now Word is fixed! Thanks again for everyone who shared their experiences and solutions.

  14. 1000 thank you’s!!!! U just saved my life, bence’s solution with amy’s Q and Tim’s answer šŸ˜‰
    Good work!

  15. Thanks, finding your solution on my first search attempt reinforces my love for both the internet and google.

  18. this is the MOST irritating thing! I cant believe that microsoft hasnt put out a fix for this yet. I tried everything that they suggested and finally deleted all of my addins and now I can hilight again.

    However, word continues to crash when I close it and it asks me every time that I open if I want to “load the template” what is up with that?

    any ideas?

    THANKS A TON for your help with this super annoying problem

  19. On another site I found this- for thow of you who might be less technically inclined. After deleting my add-ins I went back and deleted the reg key and now voila, no crashing, everything is back to normal.

    Perfect!
    For you less technical folks, click Start, type in regedit and hit Enter. Click Continue on the User Account Control box (you need to be an administrator to dot his). Be *VERY* careful what youā€™re doing, one wrong move and you could destroy your Windows install. Under HKEY_CURRENT_USER, browse to Software, Microsoft, Office, 12.0, Word. There you will see the Data key (which looks like a folder in Windows Explorer). Highlight the Data ā€œfolderā€, and hit the Delete key. Close Registry Editor, and you should be set! Worked great for me.

  20. hey mcat,

    i renamed the data folder instead of deleting it.

    i just wanna ask it there are any repercussions to renaming/deleting this file.

    Thanks

  21. hey everybody, I also had some problems with word 2007. I opened Word, and I couldn’t click at anything, everything was blocked, and it was pretty anoying. I use Vista by the way. I think this migth come because of the fact that i didn’t pay for word 2007. I used it for, maby a month or omething…. any one ever had a problem like this? Please tell me what to do, just buy word 2007, or maby it is something else… when it really is the problem i suggested, can you get a free version of word 2007?? I am not really good with computers, so maby I am asking really dumb questions…

  22. I had the exact same problem and I followed Bence Arendas
    March 15th, 2007 at 12:01 am

    1. Close Word and Outlook
    2. Start / Run and type regedit
    3. Navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USERSoftwareMicrosoftOffice12.0WordData
    4. Rename this key.
    5. Restart Word

    And it works!!!!!!!!!!

    I’m so happy now, thanks!!

  23. Bence — THANK YOU!!!!!

    THANK YOU!!!!

    THANK YOU!!!!

    and…..

    THANK YOU!!!!

    6 hours wasted, falling behind on a project…you rock my socks off.

  24. Great help indeed. I renamed the data folder as well and now Word works perfectly. Thank you for the help.

  25. We had a similar problem that popped up after we just accepted a Java update to Vista. I went to “uninstall or change” in my computer and uninstalled the Java update. Word works fine now.

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