Cannot select text with mouse in Microsoft Word, fix. 17

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.
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  1. Reuven Spolter Wed, 17 Sep 2008 07:21:18 PDT

    thanks! I’ve been stuck with this and other problems, and this quick fix solved them all! Much thanks!

  2. Jeff Michaud Sun, 28 Sep 2008 12:24:30 PDT

    This worked for me as well. I had the problem described happening to Word 2007 on Vista. Now it’s fixed and I’m able to get back to work.

    Thanks

  3. matt Sat, 04 Oct 2008 08:20:11 PDT

    man thanks that totally worked for me, i really appreciate it

  4. George Fri, 17 Oct 2008 14:12:52 PDT

    Worked like a charm!

  5. Laurie Cameron Sat, 18 Oct 2008 08:08:30 PDT

    Thank you thank you! Now I can get on with my work.

  6. gareth Sun, 19 Oct 2008 22:30:05 PDT

    thank goodness for this post! you’re a lifesaver. worked like a charm!

  7. mat Mon, 20 Oct 2008 10:46:29 PDT

    worked a treat - :-)

  8. Chris Thu, 30 Oct 2008 12:22:36 PDT

    Thank you. This happened to me a couple of weeks ago. I ran the Office Diagnostics tool, and it seemed to fix the problem. Then it happened again today — no luck with the Diagnostics, no luck with repairing Office… but your solution worked! (Lesson… always start with Google.)

  9. FGy8 Thu, 30 Oct 2008 15:56:00 PDT

    I have the same problem in both word 2002 and 2007 under XP. The fix works with bit — for a half an hour or so. Then the problem returns with both. (Actually I reinstalled the old word because I couldn’ permanently fix word 2007).

    Any suggestion? I would be really grateful

  10. Chris Thu, 13 Nov 2008 08:31:13 PST

    Brilliant! I don’t know squat about registries and I was able to do this. AND it fixed several problems I was having with Word 2007. Thanks, Ben. If I were to make one suggestion, it would be to add screen shots to this article to give novices like myself more confidence that we can do this. If you are unable to do that, then I hope this comment will give someone with no familiarity with editing a registry the confidence that they can do it. (I don’t know about previous versions of Windows, but for Vista, regedit was a very visual tool - not like you are getting dumped to a DOS prompt or anything scary like that.)

  11. Chris Thomas Sun, 16 Nov 2008 18:08:35 PST

    For me there was no HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft Office\12.0\Word\Data path.. mine was HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\12.0\ and there was a \word but it did not have any \data so….

    I deleted everything in the 12.0\ section and now it works like a charm. Thanks a ton for the info.. figured I would post this for anyone who has microsoft office, not just word.

  12. Dave Fri, 12 Dec 2008 06:12:49 PST

    Thanks for that, you saved me a lot of hair pulling, and some cursing. (not all :-) )

  13. Tinh Ve Sat, 13 Dec 2008 09:21:26 PST

    Great ! thanks so much ! I can select text for my document !

  14. Alex 'Forex Platforms' Miller Mon, 15 Dec 2008 06:25:58 PST

    Wow!

    I am so happy you can’t believe it! I have uninstalled and reinstalled Word so many times you can’t imagine!

    Then, i starting trying to type into Google my problem and thought “there’s no way i’m going to find a solution” and then your page came up!

    Amazing - very happy.

    Alex

  15. Jim Hewitt Thu, 18 Dec 2008 18:17:25 PST

    So this fix worked not only to correct the problem of not selecting text with a mouse, but also the error that “Office has stopped working” etc. every time I closed Word 2007. Now that error is gone too.

    Yep, it is really sloppy programming. Thanks for the workaround.

    Gracias!

  16. Arvin Sat, 20 Dec 2008 14:12:59 PST

    Wow, I have installed Word 4 times, thinking it was due to a corrupt upgrade from an old Word Version.. This is great and sad..

    Great that someone has helped thousands out there to correct this issue..

    Sad that thousands are having this issue and MS doesn’t yet have a fix.

  17. Arvin Sat, 20 Dec 2008 14:15:23 PST

    Hopefully everyone that has responded to this fix will hopefully go back to the many other pages that have this exact issue and post the link to this solution.. I found this page by accident looking for a fix to a different issue after giving up on this issue.

    I was planning on using Open Office by Sun until a fix was published by MS.

Comments