Disappearing Cursor in Word for Mac 2011

Anonymous
2010-11-10T15:16:33+00:00

My cursor is disappearing in some of my Word for Mac 2011 documents.  It is fine at first, but at some point it disappears and does not come back.  if I open in Word 2008, I can see the cursor.  Any ideas?

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Anonymous
2012-06-17T03:16:20+00:00

Other users have fixed the problem by disabling Word > Preferences > General > AutoHide rulers.

NOTE added on April 9, 2014:

The 14.4.1 update, which you can download through the main menu bar's Help > Check for Updates, presumably fixes this problem:

<ul><br><li><strong>Improves Microsoft </strong><strong>Word pointer display</strong></li></ul><br><br><br> <ul><br><li>This update fixes an issue that causes mouse pointers to disappear in sections of documents</li></ul> <br> ---

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Anonymous
2017-11-14T22:31:11+00:00

I lost my cursor doing something to my document. I simply saved and closed the document and when I reopened  it the cursor had returned.

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Anonymous
2015-03-15T15:24:38+00:00

The problem occurs if math equations or italics are in the hidden region of a page which is partly shown in the word window. So if the magnification is chosen so that exactly one complete page fits into the word window the problem is avoided.

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Anonymous
2015-02-15T07:57:59+00:00

All software has bugs. Presumably, they get fixed in order of priority (determined by the number of users complaining, gravity of the situation, cost to fix, etc.).

As of today, Open Office's Writer component has thousands of open bugs:

  1. Editing-related: 1209
  2. Formatting-related: 1281
  3. Open/import files: 1024
  4. ... and 8 more categories.

Some of those are feature requests, but not the majority. And some will never be addressed.

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  1. Anonymous
    2014-09-02T15:05:54+00:00

    Having just recently switched to a MacBook I'm seeing this "disappearing cursor" problem too (and yes, cursor, not mouse pointer). Word for Mac 2011 v14.4.4.

    I've just noticed something that an earlier post in this thread hinted at. The cursor comes and goes seemingly at random, but: at the times it disappears, the spelling and grammar status icon (the little scribbling notebook at the foot of the document window) starts up. It sits there, scribbling away for, what, 30 seconds (and I've no idea what it think it's doing in that time), I sit back and watch it, and when it finishes, the little red cross appears on the notebook -- and the cursor is back. I type a few words, the scribbling notebook starts up again and the cursor vanishes. Repeatably.

    So, several questions occur, first of which is what the heck does the spelling/grammar checker think it's doing for so long each time I type a few more words into a 7,000 word document; and two, why the heck does this make the cursor disappear? And, of course, question zero is: how do I turn this darn spelling/grammar "feature" (whatever it is) off?

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