How to stop cursor flicker in Word?

[George Riley]

When I am editing a large table, which I do a LOT, the cursor flickers
crazily while the spellchecker icon is working in the bar at the bottom of
the window. I turned off the spellchecker, gramar checker and the smart tags
and the spellchecker icon went away. This makes the flicker not las as long,
but it still happens when I move the cursor.

 

[Mike Seddon]

George,

What do you mean by flicker?

Do you mean the cursor blinks on and off very fast or do you mean it
seems to flick between a cursor ang the hourglass shape?

Mike

Free tips for Microsoft Office users.
http://www.kutchka.com/products/freewordtips.asp

 

[Klaus Linke]

When I am editing a large table, which I do a LOT, the cursor flickers
crazily while the spellchecker icon is working in the bar at the bottom
of the window. I turned off the spellchecker, gramar checker and the
smart tags and the spellchecker icon went away. This makes the
flicker not las as long, but it still happens when I move the cursor.

Hi George,

Setting the table width to "fixed" (Table > AutoFit) might perhaps help?

Regards,
Klaus

 

[George Riley]

Mike,
It turns on and off very rapidly for awhile, then finally "stabilizes" at
the normal cursor blink rate. When you move the cursor, it does it again.
It does not go to the hourglass shape. Klaus's suggestion below seems to
have fixed it.
George

 

[George Riley]

Klaus,
Setting the column width to "Fixed" worked!

I am embarassed to say that I can't find what other effects Autofit Column
Width Fixed is going to have on the table. It is a large table with varied
column widths and complex cell merges both vertical and horizontal. The
change didn't have any obvious (yet) detrimental effect. Is it going to
cause problems further down the line (after a lot of work)?
George

 

[Klaus Linke]

With AutoFit set to "contents", Word continually tries to to optimize the
column widths (so as to minimize the table height, I guess).
That takes a lot of ressources, especially with large tables spanning
several pages, or lots of merged cells.

Setting it to "fixed" just means that Word no longer tries to do that.
There are no other bad effects. AutoFit doesn't always work that well when
there are a lot of merged cells anyway, I think.

Regards,
Klaus

 

[JoAnn Paules [MVP]]

I see that you got it fixed but wouldn't you rather have a flickering cursor
than a cursing flicker? ;-)

(Sorry)

 

[Jean-Guy Marcil]

JoAnn Paules [MVP] was telling us:
JoAnn Paules [MVP] nous racontait que :

I see that you got it fixed but wouldn't you rather have a flickering
cursor than a cursing flicker? ;-)

(Sorry)

Is the sun beating down hard in your area as well? ;-)

--
Salut!
_______________________________________
Jean-Guy Marcil - Word MVP
(e-mail address removed)
Word MVP site: http://www.word.mvps.org

 

[JoAnn Paules [MVP]]

Oh yeah. It's been up in the 90's for the last two weeks without much of a
break. It's 6:38 pm now and it's still in the high 80's/low 90's. I take it
you're feeling the heat also?

--

JoAnn Paules
MVP Microsoft [Publisher]

 

[George Riley]

Sad to say it did not after all, solve the problem. It certainly made it
better in that it lasts a shorter time. It's still happening tho'. Any other
ideas?

Here's hope for cooler weather all round. (77oF at 12:20 AM thank goodness)
Thanks,
George

Oh yeah. It's been up in the 90's for the last two weeks without much of a
break. It's 6:38 pm now and it's still in the high 80's/low 90's. I take it
you're feeling the heat also?

--

JoAnn Paules
MVP Microsoft [Publisher]

JoAnn Paules [MVP] was telling us:
JoAnn Paules [MVP] nous racontait que :


Is the sun beating down hard in your area as well? ;-)

--
Salut!
_______________________________________
Jean-Guy Marcil - Word MVP
(e-mail address removed)
Word MVP site: http://www.word.mvps.org

 

[Helmut Weber]

Hi George,

maybe something changed or is changing the blinking time.

Have a look at GetCaretBlinkTime and SetCaretBlinkTime

Option Explicit
' -----------------------

Declare Function SetCaretBlinkTime Lib "user32" _
(ByVal wMSeconds As Long) As Long
Declare Function GetCaretBlinkTime Lib "user32" () As Long

' ---------------

Sub Test539()
MsgBox GetCaretBlinkTime
SetCaretBlinkTime (500) ' half a second is a common value
End Sub

--
Greetings from Bavaria, Germany

Helmut Weber, MVP WordVBA

Win XP, Office 2003
"red.sys" & Chr$(64) & "t-online.de"

 

[George Riley]

Helmut,

The cursor blink rate is normal until something happens (see next paragraph)
then the cursor procedes to blink rapidly for as much as 1.75 minutes then
goes back to the original normal blink rate. When the cursor blinks rapidly,
it appears solid with rapid and apparently inconsistent blinks off (as with
the spellchecker running).

This happens when: You change from the Word window and back, when something
is typed *and* the cursor is moved, when you backspace to delete.

This does not happen when you type something but do not move the cursor, it
does not happen when you move the corsor if you have not typed something, it
stops when you save.

Turning off spell and grammar checking helped as did clearing the "Label
text with smart tags" tickbox (tools>autocorrect options Smart Tags tab).
Turning off "Allow background saves" had no apparent effect.

It seems like it's checking something. Will that change the blink rate? Or
is the screen update causing the cursor to blink? This doesn't stop (for a
long time) when the spell ad grammar checking is on.

Thanks,
George Riley

 

[JoAnn Paules [MVP]]

Are you using the default cursor or some sort of variation downloaded from
the web?

--

JoAnn Paules
MVP Microsoft [Publisher]

 

[Jean-Guy Marcil]

JoAnn Paules [MVP] was telling us:
JoAnn Paules [MVP] nous racontait que :

Oh yeah. It's been up in the 90's for the last two weeks without much
of a break. It's 6:38 pm now and it's still in the high 80's/low
90's. I take it you're feeling the heat also?

Yeah, but we get the occasional short violent storm to cool things down...

--
Salut!
_______________________________________
Jean-Guy Marcil - Word MVP
(e-mail address removed)
Word MVP site: http://www.word.mvps.org

 

[George Riley]

JoAnn,
I'm just using the default cursor.
George

Are you using the default cursor or some sort of variation downloaded from
the web?

--

JoAnn Paules
MVP Microsoft [Publisher]

Helmut,

The cursor blink rate is normal until something happens (see next
paragraph)
then the cursor procedes to blink rapidly for as much as 1.75 minutes then
goes back to the original normal blink rate. When the cursor blinks
rapidly,
it appears solid with rapid and apparently inconsistent blinks off (as
with
the spellchecker running).

This happens when: You change from the Word window and back, when
something
is typed *and* the cursor is moved, when you backspace to delete.

This does not happen when you type something but do not move the cursor,
it
does not happen when you move the corsor if you have not typed something,
it
stops when you save.

Turning off spell and grammar checking helped as did clearing the "Label
text with smart tags" tickbox (tools>autocorrect options Smart Tags tab).
Turning off "Allow background saves" had no apparent effect.

It seems like it's checking something. Will that change the blink rate?
Or
is the screen update causing the cursor to blink? This doesn't stop (for
a
long time) when the spell ad grammar checking is on.

Thanks,
George Riley

 

[Klaus Linke]

This happens when: You change from the Word window and back,

That would be pretty normal (since, if the document is large, Word needs to
swap it back into memory, which takes time and ressources).

when something is typed *and* the cursor is moved, when you
backspace to delete.

Do you have any add-ins loaded that might do something in the background?
You see COM-Add-Ins in the Help menu > Info > System Info > Office > Word >
COM-Add-Ins

Another thing that might help a bit would be to work in Normal view and to
turn off background pagination (Tools > Options > General).

Regards,
Klaus