Cannot select text with mouse in Microsoft Word, fix. 11

Posted by ben on August 21, 2008

A friend had the following problem with their laptop the other day. When they open Microsoft Word they cannot select any text with the mouse, they couldn’t even place the cursor into the text by clicking the mouse on the text.

She said that the situation seemed to have occured when Norton Antivirus requested an update at the same time she was doing something in Word.

I suspected that it was that Word had somehow got corrupted, so I ran a repair, by inserting her Microsoft Office DVD and bring up the installer, and selecting Repair.

This made no difference, I then reinstalled Office, still the problem persisted. This made me think that the problem was related to the Registry, so I did a Google search.

Fixing Word text selection

I found these articles:

To summarise the fix:

  • Backup the Word\Data part of the Registry first
  • delete the the Word\Data section
  • restart Word
  • if it works then its completed, else restore the backup and keep Google searching.

Warning about Word registry changes

This fix involves removing the Word/Data registry key. By deleting this key you will loose some options you have set, this just means that you will need to reset them again. Additionally you will loose the list of files in your recently used files list at the bottom of the file menu.

Additionally be really careful about deleting anything out of the registry, because it can cause serious problems. All the main Windows programs use it, and you could end up reinstalling everything including your copy of Windows.

Backup the offending part of your computer’s registry:

  1. Exit all Office programs, Word, Excel, Outlook etc if they are running.
  2. Open regedit by: Clicking Start/Run, then type regedit, and select OK.

  3. Navigate the registry and select the appropriate Word registry subkey:

    • Word 2002:
      HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft Office\10.0\Word\Data
    • Word 2003:
      HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft Office\11.0\Word\Data
    • Word 2007:
      HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft Office\12.0\Word\Data

  4. Select the Data node, then from the File menu choose Export.

  5. Name this backup file something like word_data.reg, and save it your desktop.

Delete the Word\Data registry node

  1. Select the appropriate Word\Data node mentioned in part 3.
  2. From the Edit menu select Delete, and then click Yes.
  3. Exit regedit.

Restart Word

  1. Restart Word. This will cause Word to recreate this registry node, but you may have to re-enter some of your Word options. If everything is working as expected you can finish. If you still have a problem follow the next section.

Restore the backed up registry node

If the problem still persists then restore your registry back, and keep looking for a solution. To restore the registry back to normal simply:

  • Double-click the word_data.reg file on your desktop.
  • and select Yes, and then OK.

Everyday MySQL Commands

Posted by ben on August 18, 2008

I’m trying to put together a number of blog articles and many of them use the MySQL database, so I figured that I would post up some of my most used everyday MySQL SQL commands. Most likely I will append further commands as I write more articles so this is page is really a work in progress.

I’ve also assumed that you want to have full rights when executing these commands so I’ve used sudo, however you may not need this depending on your set up.

Finally if some other web site covers the command better or I’m feeling lazy I’ll just pop it in the links list at the bottom of this page.

Useful MySQL Commands

Starting MySQL Demon

Start your MySQL database and get it running as a background process:

sudo mysqld_safe
Ctrl + Z
bg

MySQL create databases script

Make a SQL script that creates 3 databases and assigns all rights to my username. Copy the following SQL and paste it into a file called create_databases.sql:

create database mydb_development;
create database mydb_test;
create database mydb_production;
grant all on mydb_development.* to 'my_username'@'localhost';
grant all on mydb_test.* to 'my_username'@'localhost';
grant all on mydb_production.* to 'my_username'@'localhost' identified by 'my_password';

MySQL drop databases script

Make a script to drop databases. Copy the following SQL and paste it into a file called drop_databases.sql:

drop database nemos_production;
drop database mydb_development;
drop database nemos_test;

Executing a script from MySQL

The above scripts can be executed from the command-line with the either of these commands:

sudo mysql < create_database.sql
or
sudo mysql < drop_database.sql

Showing MySQL databases

To check that the databases were created :

sudo mysqlshow
or
sudo mysql
show databases;

Displaying database tables

Displaying the tables of a database:

sudo mysqlshow mydb_development
or
sudo mysql
show tables from mydb_development;

Displaying details about a database table

Displaying details about a particular database table:

sudo mysqlshow mydb_development mytable

Droping a database table

Dropping a table from a database:

sudo mysql
use mydb_development;
drop table mytable;

Displaying information about a table

Displaying the fields and field metadata about a table:

show fields from my_table; 
or
desc my_table;

Useful Links

These are just a few quick and simple MySQL commands that you will always use. Hope this helps.

SproutCore and Web Applications

Posted by ben on August 18, 2008

It’s been a wee while since my last article, which has largely been due to my summer holiday. Anyway I’ve been reading up and experimenting with the SproutCore JavaScript framework.

Its excellent but I wanted to explain why companies and developers should consider using it. So I’ve written an article on my business partner’s web site http://rapidappsgroup.com/content/desktop-web-applications-using-sproutcore/.

Please check it out as it tries to answer a lot of the general questions about web applications and JavaScript frameworks.

BE…