Word auto-highlighting, how to make it STOP!

Anonymous
2014-01-17T18:00:43+00:00

How do you disable this STUPID feature?

I'm trying to highlight a single word or some part of a word for cut&paste operations and Word auto-highlights the whole line and sometimes the whole paragraph or page.

I can be using a mouse, I can be using the shift+arrow keys, it doesn't matter. The auto-highlight takes over.

it seems to be worse on any kind of bullets and numbering or any header/footer fields.

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auto-indent is another evil feature. cut and paste from a notepad  and the indent is changed on your bullets and numbering. pretty much control-v means indent text right ->

Microsoft 365 and Office | Word | For home | Windows

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  1. Anonymous
    2018-03-11T02:26:19+00:00

    Well I just happend to have bought new mouse today wondering if that was the problem & ive just installed it afer your advice and its worked!! Thank you so much!! Im blown away how much time I spent on trying to solve this and persevering with the problem to get documents out - THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU!! Very happy here, you've made my day :) :)

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  2. Jay Freedman 208.3K Reputation points Volunteer Moderator
    2018-03-11T02:06:03+00:00

    The "fix" is to clear the option "When selecting, automatically select entire word" as mentioned earlier in this thread by NateMenz. I do that routinely, and I don't miss the so-called "convenience". If I want to select a whole word, I just double-click it.

    If you uncheck the option and Word still selects a whole word when you single-click inside it, it's being interpreted as a double-click. That can happen when your mouse malfunctions and the switch under the mouse button "bounces". The part about selecting a whole paragraph when you click twice is additional evidence -- Word should need a triple click to select a paragraph. In that case, try using a different mouse.

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  3. Anonymous
    2018-03-11T01:59:28+00:00

    I'm not double clicking - one click causes this!??

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  4. Stefan Blom 352.5K Reputation points MVP Volunteer Moderator
    2018-03-11T01:57:05+00:00

    In Word, double-clicking selects the whole word, so you should probably change the settings for your mouse (in Windows Settings, or Control Panel, depending on your version of Windows).

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  5. Anonymous
    2018-03-11T01:48:56+00:00

    Every time I want to put the curser at a certain point (usually to add a space between words, change text or correct a spelling mistake it ALWAYS highlights the entire word, sometimes if I click twice it then highlights the entire paragraph. My intention is not to highlight at all just to place the cursor in a particular position - so the shift arrow thing does not solve my issue - SOOOO Frustrating!! It does this in word and in hotmail. It is so bad it s happening everytime I click the cursor in to postiion (counted 37 times in this text alone - I'm a dyslexic typist so need to do corrections all the time) it really is driving me crazy, Ive tried everything, nothing has worked and when I'm writing a long document it literally adds hours to the process. I cannot understand why MS have not addressed this!!?

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