Want to hide mouse cursor(I-beam) in Outlook

[Danny]

Installed Office 2003 on my new computer and my gf doesn't like the I-
beam cursor that appears whenever the mouse is in the message body
window. We had this same version of Office on the old computer and
she swears this I-beam cursor(with the four alternating wide/narrow
horizontal lines beside it) was not present in the previous
installation.

Does anyone know of a way to turn this off? She doesn't mind the text
location blinking cursor that appears in the message body
window....just the mouse cursor I-beam that indicates the mouse
position. I told her to just move the mouse cursor until it was out
of the message body window and that would solve her problem. That
solution is too simple for her.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Danny

 

[Brian Tillman]

Installed Office 2003 on my new computer and my gf doesn't like the I-
beam cursor that appears whenever the mouse is in the message body
window. We had this same version of Office on the old computer and
she swears this I-beam cursor(with the four alternating wide/narrow
horizontal lines beside it) was not present in the previous
installation.

That's the Word text tool cursor. Word uses an I-beam for the cursor in a
text area, showing you the default text alignment to its right. Move the
mouse slowly across the page from left to right. You'll probably see the
alignment symbol in the cursor change to center alignment (under the I-bean)
toward the middle of the page and to right alignment (to the left of the
I-beam) as it nears the right edge. You'll also see a small tab stop symbol
appear briefly as the cursor passes ofver a tab stop. This is a feature of
Word that allows you to vary the text alignment on a single line of text and
it's available in the Print Layout or Web Layout view. Switch to the Normal
view if you don't want to see it or switch to the built-in Outlook editor
and don't use Word.for editing messages.

Does anyone know of a way to turn this off? She doesn't mind the text
location blinking cursor that appears in the message body
window....just the mouse cursor I-beam that indicates the mouse
position. I told her to just move the mouse cursor until it was out
of the message body window and that would solve her problem. That
solution is too simple for her.

Neither of these issues are really Outlook issues. The first, as I said is
a Word function. This issue can be controlled by the Mouse applet in
Control Panel. Open that applet, click the Pointer Options tab, and check
the box labeled "Hide pointer when typing". See if that suits her. She can
also choose a different pointer scheme on the Pointers tab of that applet.
Chose one with a "Text Select" value that she likes.