Flashing Footnotes in Word Document

[Neil]

I have a 300-pg document I've been working on for over a year. I use
"endnotes" to cite sources and Word automatically puts them at the end of the
document, renumbers them if I insert, delete, or move one, etc. It's great.

As I am reading the document, if I move the mouse pointer over a footnote
number, it is supposed to open a box on the screen and display the footnote.
It has done that for over a year. But in the last few days, it has not
worked. Mostly, it doesn't show the footnote at all, but if it does, it
flashes on & off about once per second.

Can anyone tell me how to correct this? Thanks!!

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

This is a ridiculously elusive problem that first turned up in Word 2002.
The equally obscure solution (apparently discovered by accident) is to turn
the Document Map on and back off. This must be done once per relevant
document per session. (This assumes that you already have "ScreenTips"
enabled on the View tab of Tools | Options.)

 

[Neil]

Hi, Suzanne. Thanks so much for responding. I have tried to apply this fix
without success.

First, I checked the Tools | Options and verified that the ScreenTips box
was checked; it is.

Then, I used Help to find the Document Map function. (I had never heard of
it before.) It appears that it's a "toggle switch" function, where the first
time you click it, the Document Map box opens up on the left side of the
document, and the next time you click View | Document Map, it goes away.

Is that what you mean by turning it on and then turning it off? I have
tried that several times now, with no effect. I've turned the Map on, closed
the document, opened the document, turned it off, still no luck. I've closed
the document, closed Word, opened Word, opened the document, turned Document
Map on and then off, still nothing.

Would unchecking the Screen Tips box fix it? Is there anything else I can
do? Why did this suddenly start happening? And if this fix worked, would I
have to use it every time that I opened my manuscript? I know... "I ask a
lot of questions for someone from New Jersey..."

Do you have any other suggestions that might help me? Thanks so much!

Neil

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

Well, you seem to be doing it right, and I haven't heard of a case where
this doesn't help, but just to make sure we're on the same page, see
"WD2002: ScreenTip for Footnote or Endnote Reference Mark Flickers and
Contains No Text When You Rest the Pointer Over the Mark" at
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=324289

 

[Neil]

Suzanne, I read the article you pointed me to, and it gives the same
guidance you did. I have tried turning Screen Tips on & off. Turning it off
makes the text of the footnote inaccessible. Turning it back on restores the
original problem, i.e., pointing at the reference number for the note
generates the flashing effect again.

Is there no other way to fix this? If I uninstalled and then reinstalled
Word, would that help? BTW, I'm using Word 2003, SP2.

Thanks.
Neil

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

Since this problem was corrected (AFAIK) in Word 2003, I suspect there is
more here than meets the eye. This kind of thing can often be the result of
interference by some add-in, or it could conceivably be a video driver
issue. I can practically guarantee, however, that uninstalling and
reinstalling would have no effect.

 

[Neil]

Well, that's depressing. Any other solution you can think of? What if I
downloaded the beta version of the new Office suite, then opened & converted
my book to the new format?

It's not the worst problem you could have, but it's maddening nonetheless.

Thanks!
Neil

 

[jsabin69]

I recently realized i have this problem as well. It is also affecting my
spell check in word as well as outlook. I have tried numerous things, and
there are at least 10 other people with the same problem. the spell check
bug is that it grey's out solutions and defaults to undo edit instead of
ignore in the spell check window. Nothing is edited however. if you click
undo edit it quickly goes back to undo edit again.

Any ideas,... I have tried uninstalling my graphics drivers my virus
protection and even regedited to prevent the stealing of focus. None made
any change to the problem

 

[Terry Farrell]

Sounds as though possibly your AV is stealing the focus (hence flashing). If
you are using Norton AV, disable the Office Plug-in option under Preferences
in NAV.

 

[jsabin69]

Already checked that i completely uninstalled my av and the problem
persisted. The problem also persisted when I tried the program in safe mode.
after uninstalling my graphics drivers the problem persisted as well. I
have shut down every single process except for essential windows processes
and the problem persists

 

[Terry Farrell]

Has NAV ever been installed - say as a trial with the PC when it was new?

Terry

 

[jsabin69]

No clean install of vista ultimate uses free avg as virus protection problem
persisted after complete uninstall of free avg as well as in safe mode.

 

[Terry Farrell]

I've never seen this but my gut thoughts are that you have a bad third party
add-in causing this. But starting in Safe Mode should override an add-in, so
I am baffled.

Terry

 

[jsabin69]

Yeah, I'm baffled as well and it just started i wish i knew exactly when it
started i would know at least an idea of what the cause is. my system
doesn't have any bloat ware installed on it even; so i'm lost.

 

[Terry Farrell]

The only other suggestion is that if you can remember the time it started,
see if you can roll back to a Restore Point immediately prior to it.

Terry

 

[Mark D.]

Here's more info to Baffle you...
I'm running Word '02 on my laptop at home, and Word '03 on my desktop at my
office. I have the same problem on both machines (the ScreenTip that used to
show when I hover over the foot note marker now only does so briefly, and
does so only once). I've tried the work around (turning the document map on
and off) and it was successful only for my '02 version. The '03 version does
not respond at all to this tactic (and the ScreenTips feature is enabled on
both machines). What's odd is that I also read here on the forums that many
using '07 version experience the same issue. I also suspected that it could
be the A/V driver but my two machines are years apart in manufacture...with
my desktop being 5 years newer than my laptop...yet they both have this
problem. Also, the screen tips appear just fine in both versions when
hovering over toolbar buttons in Word...and if it were an AV driver issue, it
would steal the foucs in this instance just as when I hover over the footnote
marker. As one previous contributor wrote..."this is maddening". I'm sorry,
but I feel its clearly a Microsoft issue...and one that just isnt' profitable
enough for the company to allocate the resources to fixing. Sad...very sad,
when all we care about is the bottom line. That's the surest way to eroding
any good will customer's may have towards a company. Maybe I shoudl be
listening to my friends and consider a MAC after all. Signed, Someone who
still wants to be a fan of PC's but is finding it increasingly harder to be
so.

 

[Terry Farrell]

With most of the original thread gone, I am probably asking the same
question.

What happens when you start Word in Safe Mode? From Start | Run, type in

winword /a

and press enter. Open a document with Footnotes and test hovering the
pointer over them now.

Terry