Interrupted Find -- moving the mouse gets it moving again

[Clive Huggan]

Dear all,

Is anyone else finding this?

In some documents (long ones), when I do a Find command, having been taken
to a few instances I click on Find Next only to observe that the existing
highlighted text remains visible -- i.e. nothing changes/happens. But if I
move the mouse (it only needs to be slight), Word immediately moves to the
next instance.

Word 2004, updated SR1; OS 10.3.7; variety of mice; 15" recent PowerBook
with oodles of RAM.

Cheers,

Clive Huggan
Canberra, Australia
(My time zone is at least 5 hours different from the US and Europe, so my
follow-on responses to those regions can be delayed)
============================================================

 

[Daiya Mitchell]

Yeah, at least I assume so. Sounds like another variation on the screen
refresh issue that makes Word 2004 seem very slow, especially on cut/paste.
They apparently changed the parameters so that memory goes to updating the
visible mouse location instead of the text, I think as part of the switch to
ATSUI from QuickDraw (did I get those terms right?). People had found that
hitting paste, then clicking the mouse, would speed up the display of the
paste. Don't think anyone else has mentioned this aspect, but perhaps they
will now.

After much discussion on multiple threads titled something like Word 2004 is
so slow!, Paul B chipped in with the technical reason which I have roughly
paraphrased above--I could probably dig it out from somewhere if google
doesn't turn it up.

Daiya

 

[matt neuburg]

In some documents (long ones), when I do a Find command, having been taken
to a few instances I click on Find Next only to observe that the existing
highlighted text remains visible -- i.e. nothing changes/happens. But if I
move the mouse (it only needs to be slight), Word immediately moves to the
next instance.

There is a long-standing bug in various parts of Word where a button
clicked on does not do something until you move the mouse afterwards.
I've seen this in so many places I've forgetten what they all are. It
was much worse in the previous version of Word. m.

 

[Clive Huggan]

There is a long-standing bug in various parts of Word where a button
clicked on does not do something until you move the mouse afterwards.
I've seen this in so many places I've forgetten what they all are. It
was much worse in the previous version of Word. m.

Thanks, Daiya and Matt.

Sometimes I have waited to see whether the beastie will eventually do its
job, but I suspect the long wait (20 seconds?) was ended by a desk movement
that moved the mouse (thumping desk, perhaps??). At clients' offices I use a
mouse but in my offices I have Kensington large-ball trackballs, which don't
move when you thump the desk!

Daiya, Thanks for summarizing Paul Berkowitz's response from the "Word 2004
is so slow!" post, which I now recall -- didn't connect it with this
phenomenon. I hadn't thought of the "Find" issue as being slow; more of a
pause for a coffee break.

I'll keep an eye on this and clarify the symptoms; I now suspect it might,
for example, only occur when/after "Find next" is interrupted by a
"Replace".

Cheers,

Clive
==============================