Macrobutton fields behaving strangely all of a sudden

[john Q]

All of a sudden, just today, my Macrobuttons on my machine only
started misbehaving.

When I single-click on a field using a Macrobutton as a placeholder
such as "{Macrobutton NoSuchMacroName Click here"}, the File menu
(just the word File, the menu isn't cascaded open) becomes highlighted
(as if I had pressed and released the Alt key).

This started today, including happening on documents that I created
days and weeks ago. In trying to resolve this, I did restart the
machine, but it still is happening.

Also, after fooling with it for a while, seemingly most notably
connected to task switching with Alt-Tab, I'll eventually get to where
a context menu is up on the screen and stuck there (usually either
tables, or right clicking).

It is Office 2003, all patched up, on XP Pro SP2, running on a small
Server 2003 network. I can open up the same document on another
Office 2003 machine as well as an Office 2000 machine, without this
problem. In fact, yesterday, it worked normally on this machine too.
The machine has up-to-date Antivirus, Spybot, Adaware, and a personal
firewall running on it. There is no obvious virus or spyware running,

Any ideas?

 

[john Q]

Well, I figured it out... It seems like an unusual cause, but it is
because I had put the ToggleCharacterCode button up on my custom
toolbar.

Just having it present on the toolbar was causing all the problems
with the Macrobutton field working properly. As a sidenote, clicking
on the ToggleCharacterCode button while it was grayed out would make
the Table menu show up.

I discovered it when I temporarily renamed my Normal.dot, resulting
in a new one getting created, that did not exhibit the Macrobutton
problem. Then, as soon as I copied my custom toolbar to the new
Normal dot, the problem came right back. Once I took off the
ToggleCharacterCode button, either/or in the new Normal.dot or the old
one, the problem disappeared.

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

What does ToggleCharacterCode do? I have a View Field Codes button that does
not cause problems.

 

[Charles Kenyon]

Thank you for sharing this. I've archived it.

 

[john Q]

What does ToggleCharacterCode do? I have a View Field Codes button that does
not cause problems.

It's a feature new with Word 2002 and beyond. It seemed to work at
first, where it showed character code equivalents, but it showed the
side effects I mentioned earlier, causing problems with Macrobuttons
and a few other problems.

john

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

I thought from the button icon that that might be what it was, and that
would indeed be a useful function (in older versions there was a macro that
did something similar, albeit with a message box). I'm sorry to hear that it
can cause problems.