A question about Word.

mlazzer

mlazzer

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Okay, first sorry for not giving this a proper title; it's because I find it rather hard to explain this problem in a few words.

Because it's holiday I'm at my parents and yesterday I was typing a bit on their laptop, but Word did something awkward. I typed a few words and the realized it was rubbish, so I selected the wrong words and continued typing. Normally, the selected text then disappears and my new words take its place, yes? But now, Word continued right in front of the selected text and left the selected text where it was -- only deselected it. So, I selected it again and hit backspace, but still it didn't vanish. Delete somehow did work...

I know it's not a case of simply hitting "insert" because that's overwriting and is simply silly. Anybody knows what's wrong? Or is this normal and is my laptop weird where you can select text, type and make the wrong, selected text disappear?
 
cray

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hmmm....was the original text highlighted or striked out or anything like that?

i'm thinking "track changes" was enabled.
 
Matera the Mad

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The tracking might not show unless you ask it to. I was playing around with something this morning -- a file that came with something I installed -- and had to make it stop showing the tracking because it was driving me bonkers.
 
bonitakale

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Cassiopeia said:
But you CAN accidentally tell it to track changes.
Click to expand...

Yeah, if you go (in Word 2000) to Tools>Track Changes>Highlight Changes, and make sure 'highlight changes while editing,' isn't checked, that might help.

OTOH, I had something like that happen -- the delete key stopped working, and all I can remember is that I did a google search for microsoft word and 'delete key.'

One suggestion is to go to Tools > Options > General and make sure none of the WordPerfect stuff is checked. I think that may have been my problem -- but I can't understand why, because WordPerfect is my preferred program, and its delete key works just like Word's.
 
RJK

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That may be the problem and it's buried in the 'Help' menu. I'm using Word 2007 now, so I can't walk you through it. somewhere in the help window is a selection to use Wordperfect controls. Uncheck it.
 
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