Insertion point in selected text

[PierreA]

Version: 2008 Operating System: Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard) Processor: Intel I had to reinstall Office 2008 and since then, Word is behaving differently when I try to click inside a portion of text that is selected. Instead of dismissing the selection and giving me an insertion point, the selection background briefly blinks and stays there, and a smart tag appears. I have to click outside the selected text and then put the insertion point where I want it. 

What is even more intriguing is if I happen to be tracking the changes, I can see that Word does something when I click on a selected portion of text: it deletes it and replaces it with the same portion of text that was selected.

I looked everywhere in the preferences settings and couldn't find a solution for that problem.

Thanks for your help!

 

[Rob Schneider]

As you can see from other postings on this forum, re-installation
normally does not fix problems and usually leads to more problems. It
all depends on how you un-installed before re-installing. But even
then, it's a flawed problem-fixing strategy for Word on the Mac.

Check out some of the recent postings here which give detailed
instructions for manually getting rid of what is now probably a flawed
installation.


--rms

www.rmschneider.com

 

[PierreA]

Thanks for your reply Rob.

I didn't reinstall Office because I had issues with it; I was having problems with other software on my Mac.

I did a complete reinstall, making sure no traces of Office remained on my system.

 

[CyberTaz]

Have you applied all updates to 12.2.4 since re-installing? If not, you're
back to whatever level is on your installation disk. Confirm that as well as
your OS X update level. Repairing disk permissions wouldn't hurt but it may
not help in this case... At least it would help level the playing field

Did you use the Remove Office utility before reinstalling? How about more
detail about why you reinstalled & exactly how you went about it?

Also, is the behavior specific to one document or does it occur in all,
including new ones?

Regards |:>)
Bob Jones
[MVP] Office:Mac

 

[PierreA]

Thanks for your reply Bob.

I can answer affirmatively to your questions.

All updates for Office have been applied, OS X is up to date and permissions have been repaired.

I used the Remove Office utility then I made totally sure all and each traces of Office have been erased before reinstalling. That is why I had to download myself and reapply the updates individually because automatic updates from inside Office didn't work on a version of Office freshly reinstalled from the original DVD.

The behavior takes place in every document, old or new.

Many thanks for your help.

 

[CyberTaz]

OK, this type of behavior is often caused by interference from other
'helper' apps which usually load on login. Since this is a fresh
installation of Office I'm betting it's quite likely the case here.

Log out then hold the Shift key while you log in. See if the behavior
continues when you launch Word. If not check your User Account's login items
to see if you can identify which one 'at a glance'. If not, disable all that
don't appear to be required then reactivate them one at a time to find the
culprit... We had a new one reported recently by the name of "Right Zoom",
but there are numerous other haxies out there.

HTH |:>)
Bob Jones
[MVP] Office:Mac

 

[PierreA]

Hello again Bob.

You were right. I removed "RightZoom" from my user account and Word went back to its normal behavior.

Many thanks for your help!

Pierre