Annoying Highlighting

[peter.moss]

What is going on with Word 2003 highlighting? Everytime I try to make
a selection of text (with either mouse or keyboard) Word jumps in and
decides that because I've highlighted some of the sentance/paragraph I
must have really wanted all of it.

Firstly - how do I solve this? Secondly does anyone find this as
irritating as I do? MS are always being critized for their lack of
consistancy across applications and this just muddies the water more.
Also - stop patronizing your users - we learnt to cut and paste years
ago, we have had since Win95 (10 years!) to master it and now you go
and change it for one application!

Also, it is just stupid - I used to be able to select exactly what I
wanted (half a sentance, a snippet of a paragraph) but now I can't -
this is more work for users and a big step backwards in usability. MS
have broken the golden rule - the application doesn't do what you
intuitavely expect it to and instead does something that prevents you
from doing what you want..

Anyway, sorry 'bout the rant but does anyone know how to stop the
stupid thing and bring me back hours of productivity.

 

[LH]

I don't have Word in front of me at the moment, but you are looking to
turn off "smart cut and paste" Look under TOOLS, OPTIONS.

 

[Marcel]

Peter, LH,

Under Win2000 its the Tools>Options "When selecting, automatically
select entire word" feature you probably want to turn off. It kinda
explains itself. Haven't seen it select a whole paragraph, though.
Maybe that's extra in Word 2003 (can't check that now). It may have a
different name, then.

I guess that it's a matter of taste. The default value should propbably
be the most intuitivve, as you seem to expect. Presumably this is a
case of "Microsoft knows what's good for you"...

Marcel
- - - - - 8< - - - - - 8< - - - - -

Any man whose errors take ten years to correct is quite a man.
-- J. Robert Oppenheimer

 

[peter.moss]

For some reason that doesn't fix it.

It seems to be when you select across paragraphs (so one sentance in
each) or you use the Shift + End from the middle of a sentance.
Everytime it selects both paragraphs or the whole sentance.

So from selectining from here.
To here. Will select from the start all the way to here.

So will selecting here, select from the start to the end here.

It's sooooo anoying.

 

[Marcel]

Peter,

I can't reproduce this on either Word2000 or 2003 when playing with the
options. What's going on???

It sounds like you're Ctrl key is stuck! Try another keyboard,
perhaps??

Some questions:
- Do you have any Add-ins registered? (Check Tools>Templates and
Add-Ins)
- Are these sentences fields? (Check using ALT-F9 to seen whether the
text changes)
- Do you have anything checked in the Options list in the Compatibility
tab of teh Options dialog?

The best I can do at this time. Sorry it's not more concrete.

Regards
Marcel
- - - - - 8< - - - - - 8< - - - - -

Any man whose errors take ten years to correct is quite a man.
-- J. Robert Oppenheimer