Mouse Scroll Wheel Not Working In Word

  • Thread starter helplessinseattle
  • Start date
H

helplessinseattle

First of all, I'm using Windows XP Professional laptop, and Office
2003....
in case that matters.

The problem only happens when I'm working in Word, and it involves my
external USB mouse. (My touchpad is not the issue -- that works
fine.)

Whenever I use the center scroll wheel on my mouse to scroll through a
Word document, it scrolls downwards just fine, but when I try to scroll
upwards, the screen/page won't refresh properly.

As a result, one or more lines of text will appear to repeat over and
over on the page. If I keep scrolling up, the same repeated lines of
text just continue to multiply.

The worst part is that once it happens, I can no longer find my cursor
or select any text. There's all this dummy text in the way that isn't
really there, but APPEARS to be there.

I've found that I can "temporarily" interrupt the problem by clicking
with my mouse on Word's built-in vertical scroll bar and moving the
page either up down significantly -- then the text refreshes and goes
back to normal.

But, then I lose my place in the doc and have to start over with what I
was doing. Plus, the next time I scroll with my mouse wheel, it happens
again. I can also close and reopen the doc, and the text will return to
normal, but that's a pain as well.

I used to be a Word trainer, and I've worked in Word enough to know
that if you scroll too fast in a really huge Word file, it can
sometimes "hang" a bit while refreshing, and the text may appear to
repeat itself a bit -- but the files I'm talking about are relatively
small, and the text keeps repeating and repeating, and even if I scroll
nice and slowly, it still happens.

I thought it might be a problem with the mouse itself, but I'm using a
corded USB mouse, so there's no battery involved.

Also of note: I work in Word all the time, and this problem just
started happening in the last week or so. I work a lot with Plain Text
(.TXT) documents (for a project at work) and the problem does seem to
happen more often (or perhaps even exclusively) in those Plain Text
(.TXT) docs.

TROUBLESHOOTING IDEAS I HAVE ALREADY TRIED:

1) I switched mice to see if the problem would go away, but it kept
happening even with the replacement mouse.

2) I tried to update my mouse driver and video card driver as well, but
the Device Manager tells me that all my drivers are already up-to-date.

3) I uninstalled the USB mouse and then reinstalled it. No help.

4) I plugged my mouse into a different USB port. No good.

5) I scanned my computer for viruses. Nothing out of the ordinary
found. No change in the issue.

7) I ran Disk Cleanup and deleted all my temporary files, cookies,
internet files, etc. Threw away as much as I could. Nothing changed.

6) I tried creating new docs in different Word templates to see if
perhaps the Word template had become corruput, but the problem happens
no matter what template I used.

6) I cut and pasted unformated text from highly problematic docs into
new docs and resaved them as Plain Text. Problem still occurs in the
new doc.

7) I defragmented my computer. No change.

8) I use a docking stations, so I undocked my computer and plugged the
mouse directly into my laptop. The problem still occurs.

PLEASE.... can someone help me? I really need to be able to scroll
through my docs, and select text easily and quickly for my job!!!!! It
all worked fine for years and years...! Now this!!!!
AUURRRGGGHHHHH!!!!!!
 
M

Marlene

Bumping this in hopes that someone might have found a solution. I have
several users who are experiencing exactly the same problem. We have tried
the same fixes outlined below, as well as reducing the default zoom on the
document, all to no avail.

We were suspicious that the problem was the result of a Microsoft update,
but could never track it down.

Does anyone have any ideas? My users are screaming!
 
P

peterhermsen

Bumping this in hopes that someone might have found a solution. I have
several users who are experiencing exactly the same problem. We have tried
the same fixes outlined below, as well as reducing the default zoom on the
document, all tonoavail.

We were suspicious that the problem was the result of a Microsoft update,
but could never track it down.

Does anyone have any ideas? My users are screaming!

Hi!

I have the same issue with 2 computers at a customer. (XP Pro SP2 +
Office 2003 SP3)

I tried everything mentioned in the first post.

- Also tried different positions of the hardware acceleration slider.
- Different gfx driver versions.
- Complete uninstallation/installation of office 2003.

The only time it didn't occur was when i uninstalled the vidcard
drivers and let windows xp use the default generic vga driver. Then
scrolling works as it should. But this is no solution because screen
build up is really slow with the dafault generic vga driver.

The only time it works is when i use the generic vid driver from
windows xp
 
D

dave.lindbergh

Same problem here. Vista Home Premium, Office 2003.

I suspect a conflict between Word 2003 and the video driver. I'm on a
nVidia 8600 GTX video card. I'm curious what video cards other people
have who see this problem - is it a nVidia problem?

--Dave
 
G

GaryGP40

I have seen this in both Word 2002 SP3 and Word 2003 SP3. It sometime
can be tracked down to a compatibility issue (Tools - Options
Compatibility Tab and change to current version). But that doesn'
always fix it. I have never seen it in Print Layout, only normal. As t
the OP, what I found works for me (in my testing document) is to slid
the scrollbar on the side slightly and it always corrects the layou
immediately. I have my doubts that this is a driver issue (differen
machines, different versions and different drivers) since scrollin
with the scrollbar works fine. I tried turning off Backgroun
Pagination and adding the DWord for AlternateRowHeightTable to n
effect. However when I try to replicate it on a Latitude D610 (200
SP3) I cannot. I am going to try it on my T23 IBM now and see if I ca
replicate the issue there (has not had many updates to it since it'
not hooked up to the Net.

I know a LOT of people are seeing this issue. It's not an easy thing t
find an answer to. I have a user at work with the same problem. I hav
found some things work (Compatibility being one) and yet they don'
stay fixed! Oh well, if computers worked perfectly I guess I'd be ou
of work :
 
G

GaryGP40

I had to update my video card driver in my T23 but guess what? N
scrolling issue. (Has Word 2002 on it).

It appears to happen on Dell's exclusively it seems? But not Al
Dells...as mentioned my D610 Latitude does not exhibit the problem eve
when I use a doc that one of my users IS having a problem on! However
my documents here seem OK (and all using Normal styles and no extr
plugins other than one to create PDF's). I am doing some furthe
testing on a brand new document that I am creating natively in Wor
2003
 

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